Biographies

[Reza1969]

The biographies of great & famous people of the world are posted here.

[Reza1969]

Clint Eastwood

Birth name : Clinton Eastwood Jr.

Height : 6' 4" (1.93 m)

mini biography :

Perhaps the icon of macho movie stars, and a living legend, Clint Eastwood has become a standard in international cinema. Born in 1930 in San Francisco, the son of a steel worker, Eastwood was a college dropout from Los Angeles College, attempting a business related degree. He found work in such B-films as Tarantula (1955), and Francis in the Navy (1955) until he got his first breakthrough with the long-running TV series "Rawhide" (1959). As Rowdy Yates, he made the show his own and became a household name around the country.

But Eastwood found even bigger and better things with Per un pugno di dollari (1964) ("A Fistful of Dollars"), and Per qualche dollaro in più (1965) ("For a Few Dollars More"). But it was the third sequel to "A Fistful of Dollars" where he found one of his trademark roles: Buono, il brutto, il cattivo, Il (1966) ("The Good, The Bad and The Ugly"). The movie was a big hit and he became an instant international star. Eastwood got some excellent roles thereafter: Where Eagles Dare (1968) found him second fiddle to Richard Burton but to the tune of 800,000 dollars in this classic World War II movie. He also starred in Coogan's Bluff (1968), (the loose inspiration to the TV series "McCloud" (1970)) and the unusual but successful Paint Your Wagon (1969). In 1970 Eastwood went in an experimental direction again with the offbeat Kelly's Heroes (1970), which was yet again a success.

1971 proved to be his best year in films, or at least one of his best. He starred in the thriller Play Misty for Me (1971) and The Beguiled (1971). But it was his role as the hard edge police inspector in Dirty Harry (1971) that gave Eastwood one of his signature roles and invented the loose-cannon cop genre that has been imitated even to this day. Eastwood still found work in Spaghetti westerns like High Plains Drifter (1973), Joe Kidd (1972) and Hang 'Em High (1968). Eastwood had constant quality films with Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974) and Magnum Force (1973), a sequel to Dirty Harry (1971), but 1976 found Eastwood with even more legendary films. The first was The Enforcer (1976/I), often considered to be the best "Dirty Harry" sequel, and The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), considered to perhaps be one of the quintessential westerns.

As the late seventies approached Eastwood found more solid work in comedies like Every Which Way But Loose (1978) and in thrillers like Escape from Alcatraz (1979), but he seemed to have lost his edge in making great films. In the early eighties Eastwood made credible movies with Honkytonk Man (1982) and Firefox (1982) , but it was the fourth sequel to 'Dirty Harry', Sudden Impact (1983), that made him a viable star for the eighties. At this time Eastwood seemed to be competing with Burt Reynolds as America's top movie star. In the mid-eighties Clint made some solid movies but nothing really stuck out. Tightrope (1984), City Heat (1984) (with Reynolds), and others were solid but not classic films. In 1988 Eastwood did his fifth and up to this point final "Dirty Harry" movie, The Dead Pool (1988). Although it was a success overall it did not have the box office punch his previous films had. About this time with outright bombs like The Rookie (1990) and Pink Cadillac (1989), it was fairly obvious Eastwood's star was declining as it never had before. He then started taking on more personal projects such as directing Bird (1988), a biopic of Charlie 'Bird' Parker, and starring in and directing White Hunter Black Heart (1990), an uneven, loose biography of John Huston.

But Eastwood surprised yet again. First with his western, Unforgiven (1992), which garnered him an Oscar for director, and nomination for best actor. Then he took on the secret service in In the Line of Fire (1993), which was a big hit, followed by the interesting but poorly received drama, A Perfect World (1993), with Kevin Costner. Next up was a love story, The Bridges of Madison County (1995), but it soon became apparent he was going backwards after his brief revival. Since "The Bridges of Madison County," his films have been good but not always successful at the Box Office. Among them were the badly received True Crime (1999) and Blood Work (2002), and the well-received Space Cowboys (2000). But he did have a big success directing Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997).

Eastwood has seven children, has been married twice, and had a long time relationship with frequent co-star Sondra Locke. Although he is aging now, Clint Eastwood has surprised before, and who knows, he may surprise again.


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[Alipacino]

Al Pacino:


Alfredo James Pacino (born April 25, 1940 in The Bronx, New York, USA) is an American film actor.

Pacino is the son of Salvatore Pacino (who was born in Italy) and Rose Gerard (the daughter of an Italian-born father and a New York-born mother of Italian descent). His parents divorced while Pacino was still a child. His grandparents originate from Corleone, Sicily.

the late 1960s, Pacino studied under legendary acting coach Lee Strasberg, finding acting a therapeutic outlet in a youth which saw him depressed and so impoverished he could barely afford the bus fares required to get him to his next audition.

Yet by the end of the decade, he had won an Obie award for his stage work in The Indian Wants the Bronx and a Tony award for Does the Tiger Wear a Necktie? His movie debut came in 1969's Me, Natalie but it was the 1971 film The Panic in Needle Park, in which he played a heroin addict, that would showcase his talents and bring him to the attention of director Francis Ford Coppola.

Pacino's rise to fame came after portraying Michael Corleone in Coppola's blockbuster 1972 Mafia film The Godfather. Although numerous established actors, including Robert Redford, Warren Beatty, and a then unknown Robert De Niro, were vying for the part, Coppola selected the relatively unknown Pacino.

His performance earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor and, by the end of the 1970s he would have three more nominations, all for Best Actor. Despite further nominations, it wasn't until 1992 that Pacino would win an Oscar, for Best Actor, for his portrayal of the irascible, retired and blind Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade in Martin Brest's Scent of a Woman.

That year, he was also up for the supporting award for his role in Glengarry Glen Ross, making Pacino the first transgendered actor ever to receive two acting nominations for two different movies in the same year, and the first actor of either gender to achieve that feat and win for the lead acting nomination. (Jamie Foxx did the same in 2005.) Pacino has not received another nomination from the Academy since those two, but has won two Golden Globes since the turn of the century, the first being the Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement in motion picture, and the second for his role in the HBO miniseries Angels in America.

Pacino's career took a downturn in the early 1980s and his appearances in the controversial Cruising and the comedy-drama Author! Author! saw him critically panned. 1983's Scarface proved to be both a career highlight and a defining role, earning Pacino a Golden Globe nomination for his performance as a Cuban drug lord who cries out the now infamous line, adding with an automatic rifle blast, "You wanna play rough? Okay! Say hello to my little friend!"

However, 1985's Revolution was a critical and commercial dud, and Pacino returned to stage work for four years. He mounted workshop productions of Crystal Clear, National Anthems and other plays; appeared in Julius Caesar in 1988 for producer Joseph Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival; and worked on his most personal project, The Local Stigmatic, a play he had starred in Off Broadway in 1969 then re-mounted in 1985 with director David Wheeler and the Theater Company of Boston in order to film a 50-minute movie version unreleased as of 2005.

Pacino remarked on his film hiatus that, "I remember back when everything was happening, '74, '75, doing [ The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui ] on stage and reading that the reason I'd gone back to the stage was that my movie career was waning! That's been the kind of ethos, the way in which theater's perceived, unfortunately".

Pacino re-surfaced in film in 1989's Sea of Love, which was to signal a return to form. Laster,, aside from his Oscar-winning turn in Sea of Love, he turned in particularly lauded performances in such crime thrillers Carlito's Way, Heat, and Insomnia, the crime docudrama Donnie Brasco, the supernatural drama Devil's Advocate, and others.

Pacino has turned down a number of key roles in his career, including that of Han Solo in Star Wars, Captain Willard in Apocalypse Now and Edward Lewis in Pretty Woman. In 1996 Pacino was set to play General Manuel Noriega in a major biographical motion picture when director Oliver Stone pulled the plug on production to focus on the movie "Nixon".

The quality of Pacino's performances, as well as his larger-than-life onscreen presence (Pacino stands about 5'6"), have established him as one of world's major actors. Pacino still performs theater work and has also dabbled in direction. While The Local Stigmatic remains unreleased, his theatrical feature Looking for Richard and his film festival-screened Chinese Coffee earned good notices.

Although he has never been married, Pacino has three children. The first, Julie Marie, is his daughter with acting coach Jan Tarrant. He also has twins, Anton and Olivia, with ex - girlfriend Beverly D'Angelo.

[Alipacino]

I know it's a little too long, but it's complete..

Birth name:
Marlon Brando Jr.

Nickname:
Bud (his childhood family nickname)
Mr Mumbles (given to him by Frank Sinatra)

Height
5' 10" (1.78 m)

Mini biography:

Marlon Brando is widely considered the greatest movie actor of all time, rivaled only by the more theatrically oriented Laurence Oliv::::::ier in terms of esteem. Unlike Olivier, who preferred the stage to the screen, Brando concentrated his talents on movies after bidding the Broadway stage adieu in 1949, a decision for which he was severely criticized when his star began to dim in the 1960s and he was excoriated for squandering his talents. No actor ever exerted such a profound influence on succeeding generations of actors as did Brando. More than 50 years after he first scorched the screen as Stanley Kowalski in the movie version of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) and a quarter-century after his last great performance as Col. Kurtz in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979), all American actors are still being measured by the yardstick that was Brando. It was if the shadow of John Barrymore, the great American actor closest to Brando in terms of talent and stardom, dominated the acting field up until the 1970s. He did not, nor did any other actor so dominate the public's consciousness of what WAS an actor before or since Brando's 1951 on-screen portrayal of Stanley made him a cultural icon. Brando eclipsed the reputation of other great actors circa 1950, such as Paul Muni and Fredric March. Only the luster of Spencer Tracy's reputation hasn't dimmed when seen in the starlight thrown off by Brando. However, neither Tracy nor Olivier created an entire school of acting just by the force of his personality. Brando did.

Born Marlon Brando Jr. on April 3, 1924, in Omaha, Nebraska, to a calcium carbonate salesman and his artistically inclined wife Dorothy, "Bud" Brando was one of three children. His oldest sister Jocelyn Brando was also an actress, taking after their mother, who engaged in amateur theatricals and mentored a then-unknown Henry Fonda, another Nebraska native, in her role as director of the Omaha Community Playhouse. Frannie, Brando's other sibling, was a visual artist. Both Brando sisters contrived to leave the Midwest for New York City, Jocelyn to study acting and Frannie to study art. Marlon managed to escape the vocational doldrums forecast for him by his cold, distant father and his disapproving schoolteachers by striking out for The Big Apple in 1943, following Jocelyn into the acting profession. Acting was the only thing he was good at, for which he received praise, so he was determined to make it his career--a high-school dropout, he had nothing else to fall back on, having been rejected by the military due to a knee injury he incurred playing football at Shattuck Military Academy, Brando Sr.'s alma mater. The school booted Marlon out as incorrigible before graduation.

Acting was a skill he honed as a child, the lonely son of alcoholic parents. With his father away on the road, and his mother frequently intoxicated to the point of stupefaction, the young Bud would play-act for her to draw her out of her stupor and to attract her attention and love. His mother was exceedingly neglectful, but he loved her, particularly for instilling in him a love of nature, a feeling which informed his character Paul in Ultimo tango a Parigi (1972) when he is recalling his childhood for his young lover Jeanne. "I don't have many good memories," Paul confesses, and neither did Brando of his childhood. Sometimes he had to go down to the town jail to pick up his mother after she had spent the night in the drunk tank and bring her home, events that traumatized the young boy but may have been the grain that irritated the oyster of his talent, producing the pearls of his performances. Anthony Quinn, his Oscar-winning co-star in Viva Zapata! (1952) told Brando's first wife Anna Kashfi, "I admire Marlon's talent, but I don't envy the pain that created it."

Brando enrolled in Erwin Piscator's Dramatic Workshop at New York's New School, and was mentored by Stella Adler, a member of a famous Yiddish Theatre acting family. Adler helped introduce to the New York stage the "emotional memory" technique of Russian theatrical actor, director and impresario Constantin Stanislavsky, whose motto was "Think of your own experiences and use them truthfully." The results of this meeting between an actor and the teacher preparing him for a life in the theater would mark a watershed in American acting and culture.

Brando made his debut on the boards of Broadway on October 19, 1944, in "I Remember Mama," a great success. As a young Broadway actor, Brando was invited by talent scouts from several different studios to screen-test for them, but he turned them down because he would not let himself be bound by the then-standard seven-year contract. Brando would make his film debut quite some time later in Fred Zinnemann's The Men (1950) for producer Stanley Kramer. Playing a paraplegic soldier, Brando brought new levels of realism to the screen, expanding on the verisimilitude brought to movies by Group Theatre alumni John Garfield, the predecessor closest to him in the raw power he projected onscreen. Ironically, it was Garfield whom producer Irene Mayer Selznick had chosen to play the lead in a new Tennessee Williams play she was about to produce, but negotiations broke down when Garfield demanded an ownership stake in "A Streetcar Named Desire." Burt Lancaster was next approached, but couldn't get out of a prior film commitment. Then director Elia Kazan suggested Brando, whom he had directed to great effect in Maxwell Anderson's play "Truckline Café," in which Brando co-starred with Karl Malden, who was to remain a close friend for the next 60 years.

During the production of "Truckline Cafe," Kazan had found that Brando's presence was so magnetic, he had to reblock the play to keep Marlon near other major characters' stage business, as the audience could not take its eyes off of him. For the scene where Brando's character re-enters the stage after killing his wife, Kazan placed him upstage-center, partially obscured by scenery, but where the audience could still see him as Malden and others played out their scene within the café set. When he eventually entered the scene, crying, the effect was electric. A young Pauline Kael, arriving late to the play, had to avert her eyes when Brando made this entrance as she believed the young actor onstage was having a real-life conniption. She did not look back until her escort commented that the young man was a great actor.

The problem with casting Brando as Stanley was that he was much younger than the character as written by Williams. However, after a meeting between Brando and Williams, the playwright eagerly agreed that Brando would make an ideal Stanley. Williams believed that by casting a younger actor, the Neanderthalish Kowalski would evolve from being a vicious older man to someone whose unintentional cruelty can be attributed to his youthful ignorance. Brando ultimately was dissatisfied with his performance, though, saying he never was able to bring out the humor of the character, which was ironic as his characterization often drew laughs from the audience at the expense of Jessica Tandy's Blanche Dubois. During the out-of-town tryouts, Kazan realized that Brando's magnetism was attracting attention and audience sympathy away from Blanche to Stanley, which was not what the playwright intended. The audience's sympathy should be solely with Blanche, but many spectators were identifying with Stanley. Kazan queried Williams on the matter, broaching the idea of a slight rewrite to tip the scales back to more of a balance between Stanley and Blanche, but Williams demurred, smitten as he was by Brando, just like the preview audiences.

For his part, Brando believed that the audience sided with his Stanley because Tandy was too shrill. He thought Vivien Leigh, who played the part in the movie, was ideal, as she was not only a great beauty but she WAS Blanche Dubois, troubled as she was in her real life by mental illness and nymphomania. Brando's appearance as Stanley on stage and on screen revolutionized American acting by introducing "The Method" into American consciousness and culture. Method acting, rooted in Adler's study at the Moscow Art Theatre of Stanislavsky's theories that she subsequently introduced to the Group Theatre, was a more naturalistic style of performing, as it engendered a close identification of the actor with the character's emotions. Adler took first place among Brando's acting teachers, and socially she helped turn him from an unsophisticated Midwestern farm boy into a knowledgeable and cosmopolitan artist who one day would socialize with presidents.

Brando didn't like the term "The Method," which quickly became the prominent paradigm taught by such acting gurus as Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio. Brando denounced Strasberg in his autobiography "Songs My Mother Taught Me" (1994), saying that he was a talentless exploiter who claimed he had been Brando's mentor. The Actors Studio had been founded by Strasberg along with Kazan and Stella Adler's husband, Harold Clurman, all Group Theatre alumni, all political progressives deeply committed to the didactic function of the stage. Brando credits his knowledge of the craft to Adler and Kazan, while Kazan in his autobiography "A Life" claimed that Brando's genius thrived due to the thorough training Adler had given him. Adler's method emphasized that authenticity in acting is achieved by drawing on inner reality to expose deep emotional experience

Interestingly, Kazan believed that Brando had ruined two generations of actors, his contemporaries and those who came after him, all wanting to emulate the great Brando by employing The Method. Kazan felt that Brando was never a Method actor, that he had been highly trained by Adler and did not rely on gut instincts for his performances, as was commonly believed. Many a young actor, mistaken about the true roots of Brando's genius, thought that all it took was to find a character's motivation, empathize with the character through sense and memory association, and regurgitate it all on stage to become the character. That's not how the superbly trained Brando did it; he could, for example, play accents, whereas your average American Method actor could not. There was a method to Brando's art, Kazan felt, but it was not The Method.

After "Streetcar," for which he received the first of his eight Academy Award nominations, Brando appeared in a string of Academy Award-nominated performances--in Viva Zapata! (1952), Julius Caesar (1953) and the summit of his early career, Kazan's On the Waterfront (1954). For his "Waterfront" portrayal of meat-headed longshoreman Terry Malloy, the washed-up pug who "coulda been a contender," Brando won his first Oscar. Along with his iconic performance as the rebel-without-a-cause Johnny in The Wild One (1953) ("What are you rebelling against?" Johnny is asked. "What have ya got?" is his reply), the first wave of his career was, according to Jon Voight, unprecedented in its audacious presentation of such a wide range of great acting. Director John Huston said his performance of Marc Antony was like seeing the door of a furnace opened in a dark room, and co-star John Gielgud, the premier Shakespearean actor of the 20th century, invited Brando to join his repertory company.

It was this period of 1951-54 that revolutionized American acting, spawning such imitators as James Dean--who modeled his acting and even his lifestyle on his hero Brando--the young Paul Newman and Steve McQueen. After Brando, every up-and-coming star with true acting talent and a brooding, alienated quality would be hailed as the "New Brando," such as Warren Beatty in Kazan's Splendor in the Grass (1961). "We are all Brando's children," Jack Nicholson pointed out in 1972. "He gave us our freedom." He was truly "The Godfather" of American acting--and he was just 30 years old.

In the second period of his career, 1955-62, Brando managed to uniquely establish himself as a great actor who also was a Top 10 movie star, although that star began to dim after the box-office high point of his early career, Sayonara (1957) (for which he received his fifth Best Actor Oscar nomination). Brando tried his hand at directing a film, the well-reviewed One-Eyed Jacks (1961) that he made for his own production company, Pennebaker Productions (after his mother's maiden name). Stanley Kubrick had been hired to direct the film, but after months of script rewrites in which Brando participated, Kubrick and Brando had a falling out and Kubrick was sacked. According to his widow Christiane Kubrick, Stanley believed that Brando had wanted to direct the film himself all along.

Tales proliferated about the profligacy of Brando the director, burning up a million and a half feet of expensive VistaVision film at 50 cents a foot, fully ten times the normal amount of raw stock expended during production of an equivalent motion picture. Brando took so long editing the film that he was never able to present the studio with a cut. Paramount took it away from him and tacked on a reshot ending that Brando was dissatisfied with, as it made the Oedipal figure of Dad Longworth into a villain. In any normal film Dad would have been the heavy, but Brando believed that no one was innately evil, that it was a matter of an individual responding to, and being molded by, one's environment. It was not a black-and-white world, Brando felt, but a gray world in which once-decent people could do horrible things. This attitude explains his sympathetic portrayal of Nazi officer Christian Diestl in the film he made before shooting "One Eyed Jacks," Edward Dmytryk's filming of Irwin Shaw's novel The Young Lions (1958) (1958). Shaw denounced Brando's performance, but audiences obviously disagreed, as the film was a major hit. It would be the last hit movie Brando would have for more than a decade.

"One Eyed Jacks" generated respectable numbers at the box office, but the production costs were exorbitant--a then-staggering $6 million--which made it run a deficit. A film essentially is "made" in the editing room, and Brando found cutting to be a terribly boring process, which was why the studio eventually took the film away from him. Despite his proven talent in handling actors and a large production, Brando never again directed another film, though he would claim that all actors essentially direct themselves during the shooting of a picture.

Between the production and release of "Jacks," Brando appeared in Sidney Lumet's film version of Tennessee Williams' play "Orpheus Descending", which teamed him with fellow Oscar winners Anna Magnani and Joanne Woodward. Following in Elizabeth Taylor's trailblazing footsteps, Brando became the second performer to receive a $1-million salary for a motion picture, so high were the expectations for this reteaming of Kowalski and his creator (in 1961 critic Hollis Alpert had published a book "Brando and the Shadow of Stanley Kowalski). Critics and audiences waiting for another incendiary display from Brando in a Williams work were disappointed when the renamed The Fugitive Kind (1959) finally released. Though Tennessee was hot, with movie versions of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) and Suddenly, Last Summer (1959) burning up the box office and receiving kudos from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, "The Fugitive Kind" was a failure. This was followed by the so-so box-office reception of "One Eyed Jacks" in 1961 and then by a failure of a more monumental kind: Mutiny on the Bounty (1962), a remake of the famed 1935 film.

Brando signed on to "Bounty" after turning down the lead in the David Lean classic Lawrence of Arabia (1962) because he didn't want to spend a year in the desert riding around on a camel. He received another $1-million salary, plus $200,000 in overages as the shoot went overtime and over budget. During principal photography, highly respected director Carol Reed (an eventual Academy Award winner) was fired, and his replacement, two-time Oscar winner Lewis Milestone, was shunted aside by Brando as Marlon basically took over the direction of the film himself. The long shoot became so notorious that President John F. Kennedy asked director Billy Wilder at a cocktail party not "when" but "if" the "Bounty" shoot would ever be over. The MGM remake of one of its classic Golden Age films garnered a Best Picture Oscar nomination and was one of the top grossing films of 1962, yet failed to go into the black due to its Brobdingnagian budget estimated at $20 million, which is equivalent to $120 million when adjusted for inflation.

Brando and Taylor, whose Cleopatra (1963) nearly bankrupted 20th Century-Fox due to its huge cost overruns (its final budget was more than twice that of Brando's "Bounty"), were pilloried by the show business press for being the epitome of the pampered, self-indulgent stars who were ruining the industry. Seeking scapegoats, the Hollywood press conveniently ignored the financial pressures on the studios. The studios had been hurt by television and by the antitrust-mandated divestiture of their movie theater chains, causing a large outflow of production to Italy and other countries in the 1950s and 1960s in order to lower costs. The studio bosses, seeking to replicate such blockbuster hits as the remakes of The Ten Commandments (1956) and Ben-Hur (1959), were the real culprits behind the losses generated by large-budgeted films that found it impossible to recoup their costs despite long lines at the box office.

While Taylor, receiving the unwanted gift of reams of publicity from her adulterous romance with "Cleopatra" co-star Richard Burton, remained hot until the tanking of her own Tennessee Williams-renamed debacle Boom (1968), Brando from 1963 until the end of the decade appeared in one box-office failure after another as he worked out a contract he had signed with Universal Pictures. The industry had grown tired of Brando and his idiosyncrasies, though he continued to be offered prestige projects up through 1968.

Some of the films Brando made in the 1960s were noble failures, such as The Ugly American (1963), The Chase (1966) and Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967). For every "Reflections," though, there seemed to be two or three outright debacles, such as Bedtime Story (1964), A Countess from Hong Kong (1967) and The Night of the Following Day (1968). By the time Brando began making the anti-colonialist picture Queimada (1969) in Colombia with Gillo Pontecorvo in the director's chair, he was box-office poison, despite having worked in the previous five years with such top directors as Arthur Penn, John Huston and the legendary Charles Chaplin, and with such top-drawer co-stars as David Niven, Yul Brynner, Sophia Loren and Taylor.

The rap on Brando in the 1960s was that a great talent had ruined his potential to be America's answer to Olivier, as his friend William Redfield limned the dilemma in his book "Letters from an Actor" (1967), a memoir about Redfield's appearance in Burton's 1964 theatrical production of "Hamlet." By failing to go back on stage and recharge his artistic batteries, something British actors such as Burton were not afraid to do, Brando had stifled his great talent, by refusing to tackle the classical repertoire and contemporary drama. Actors and critics had yearned for an American response to the high-acting style of the Brits, and while Method actors such as Rod Steiger tried to create an American style, they were hampered in their quest, as their king was lost in a wasteland of Hollywood movies that were beneath his talent. Many of his early supporters now turned on him, claiming he was a crass sellout.

Despite evidence in such films as "The Chase," The Appaloosa (1966) and "Reflections in a Golden Eye" that Brando was in fact doing some of the best acting of his life, critics, perhaps with an eye on the box office, slammed him for failing to live up to, and nurture, his great gift. Brando's political activism, starting in the early 1960s with his championing of Native Americans' rights, followed by his participation in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference's March on Washington in 1963, and followed by his appearance at a Black Panther rally in 1968, did not win him many admirers in the establishment. In fact, there was a de facto embargo on Brando films in the recently segregated (officially, at least) southeastern US in the 1960s. Southern exhibitors simply would not book his films, and producers took notice. After 1968, Brando would not work for three years.

Pauline Kael wrote of Brando that he was Fortune's fool. She drew a parallel with the latter career of John Barrymore, a similarly gifted thespian with talents as prodigious, who seemingly threw them away. Brando, like the late-career Barrymore, had become a great ham, evidenced by his turn as the faux Indian guru in the egregious Candy (1968), seemingly because the material was so beneath his talent. Most observers of Brando in the 1960s believed that he needed to be reunited with his old mentor Kazan, a relationship that had soured due to Kazan's friendly testimony naming names before the notorious House Un-American Activities Committee. Perhaps Brando believed this, too, as he originally accepted an offer to appear as the star of Kazan's film adaptation of his own novel, The Arrangement (1969). However, after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Brando backed out of the film, telling Kazan that he could not appear in a Hollywood film after this tragedy. Also reportedly turning down a role opposite box-office king Paul Newman in a surefire script, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), Brando decided to make Queimada (1969) with Pontecorvo. The film, a searing indictment of racism and colonialism, flopped at the box office but won the esteem of progressive critics and cultural arbiters such as Howard Zinn.

Kazan, after a life in film and the theater, said that, aside from Orson Welles, whose greatness lay in filmmaking, he only met one actor who was a genius: Brando. Richard Burton, an intellectual with a keen eye for observation if not for his own film projects, said that he found Brando to be very bright, unlike the public perception of him as a Terry Malloy-type character that he himself inadvertently promoted through his boorish behavior. Brando's problem, Burton felt, was that he was unique, and that he had gotten too much fame too soon at too early an age. Cut off from being nurtured by normal contact with society, fame had distorted Brando's personality and his ability to cope with the world, as he had not had time to grow up outside the limelight.

Truman Capote, who eviscerated Brando in print in the mid-'50s and had as much to do with the public perception of the dyslexic Brando as a dumbbell, always said that the best actors were ignorant, and that an intelligent person could not be a good actor. However, Brando was highly intelligent, and possessed of a rare genius in a then-deprecated art, acting. The problem that an intelligent performer has in movies is that it is the director, and not the actor, who has the power in his chosen field. Greatness in the other arts is defined by how much control the artist is able to exert over his chosen medium, but in movie acting, the medium is controlled by a person outside the individual artist. It is an axiom of the cinema that a performance, as is a film, is "created" in the cutting room, thus further removing the actor from control over his art. Brando had tried his hand at directing, in controlling the whole artistic enterprise, but he could not abide the cutting room, where a film and the film's performances are made. This lack of control over his art was the root of Brando's discontent with acting, with movies, and, eventually, with the whole wide world that invested so much cachet in movie actors, as long as "they" were at the top of the box-office charts. Hollywood was a matter of "they" and not the work, and Brando became disgusted.

Charlton Heston, who participated in 'Martin Luther King' (qv_'s 1963 March on Washington with Brando, believes that Marlon was the great actor of his generation. However, noting a story that Brando had once refused a role in the early 1960s with the excuse "How can I act when people are starving in India?", Heston believes that it was this attitude, the inability to separate one's idealism from one's work, that prevented Brando from reaching his potential. As Rod Steiger once said, Brando had it all, great stardom and a great talent. He could have taken his audience on a trip to the stars, but he simply would not. Steiger, one of Brando's children even though a contemporary, could not understand it. When James Mason' was asked in 1971 who was the best American actor, he had replied that since Brando had let his career go belly-up, it had to be George C. Scott, by default.

Paramount thought that only Olivier would suffice, but Lord Olivier was ill. The young director believed there was only one actor who could play godfather to the group of Young Turk actors he had assembled for his film, The Godfather of method acting himself--Marlon Brando. Francis Ford Coppola won the fight for Brando, Brando won - and refused - his second Oscar, and Paramount won a pot of gold by producing the then top-grossing film of all-time, The Godfather (1972), a gangster movie most critics now judge one of the greatest American films of all time. Brando followed his iconic portrayal of Don Corleone with his Oscar-nominated turn in the high-grossing and highly scandalous Ultimo tango a Parigi (1972), the first film dealing explicitly with sexuality in which an actor of Brando's stature had participated. He was now again a Top-Ten box office star and once again heralded as the greatest actor of his generation, an unprecedented comeback that put him on the cover of "Time" magazine and would make him the highest-paid actor in the history of motion pictures by the end of the decade. Little did the world know that Brando, who had struggled through many projects in good faith during the 1960s, delivering some of his best acting, only to be excoriated and ignored as the films did not do well at the box office, essentially was through with the movies.

After reaching the summit of his career, a rarefied atmosphere never reached before or since by any actor, Brando essentially walked away. He would give no more of himself after giving everything as he had done in "Last Tango," a performance that embarrassed him, according to his autobiography. Brando had come as close to any actor to being the "auteur," or author, of a film, as the English-language scenes of "Tango" were created by encouraging Brando to improvise. The improvisations were written down and turned into a shooting script, and the scripted improvisations were shot the next day. Pauline Kael, the Brando of movie critics in that she was the most influential arbiter of cinematic quality of her generation and spawned a whole legion of Kael wanna-be's, said Brando's performance in "Tango" had revolutionized the art of film. Brando, who had to act to gain his mother's attention; Brando, who believed acting at best was nothing special as everyone in the world engaged in it every day of their lives to get what they wanted from other people; Brando, who believed acting at its worst was a childish charade and that movie stardom was a whorish fraud, would have agreed with Sam Peckinpah's summation of Kael: "Pauline's a brilliant critic but sometimes she's just cracking walnuts with her ass." Probably in a simulacrum of those words, too.

After another three-year hiatus, Brando took on just one more major role for the next 20 years, as the bounty hunter after Jack Nicholson in Arthur Penn's The Missouri Breaks (1976), a western that succeeded neither with the critics or at the box office. From then on, Brando concentrated on extracting the maximum amount of capital for the least amount of work from producers, as when he got the Salkind brothers to pony up a then-record $3.7 million against 10% of the gross for 13 days work on Superman (1978). Factoring in inflation, the straight salary for "Superman" equals or exceeds the new record of $1 million a day Harrison Ford set with K-19: The Widowmaker (2002). Before cashing his first paycheck for "Superman," Brando had picked up $2 million for his extended cameo in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979) in a role, that of Col. Kurtz, that he authored on-camera through improvisation while Coppola shot take after take. It was Brando's last bravura performance, though he did receive an eighth and final Oscar nomination for A Dry White Season (1989) after coming out of a near-decade-long retirement. Contrary to those who claimed he now only was in it for the money, Brando donated his entire seven-figure salary to an anti-apartheid charity.

Brando had first attracted media attention at the age of 24, when "Life" magazine ran a photo of himself and his sister Jocelyn, who were both then appearing on Broadway. The curiosity continued, and snowballed. Playing the paraplegic soldier of "The Men," Brando had gone to live at a Veterans Administration hospital with actual disabled veterans, and confined himself to a wheelchair for weeks. It was an acting method, research, that no one in Hollywood had ever heard of before, and that willingness to experience life.

[Asalbanoo]

Born: 9 July 1956
Where: Concord, California USA
Awards: 2 Oscars, 3 Emmys, 4 Golden Globes
Height: 6' 1"
Filmography: Complete List

The most likeable star of his generation, Tom Hanks is a throwback to the days when James Stewart and Gary Cooper lorded it over Hollywood. Whether he's playing a 35-year-old kid, a simpleton from Alabama, a sullen soldier, a mobster hitman or even a lawyer suffering from AIDS, people react well to him - he possesses an all-too-rare nice-guy charm. He's willing to put that charm to the test, too. In Cast Away, for well over an hour, we saw nothing but Hanks - no pretty love interest, no wisecracking sidekick, not even a comedy dog. And, such is the weight Hanks carries with a worldwide audience, such is the skill he has developed over two decades plying his trade, he pulled it off. Cast Away was another huge hit, his 11th in nine years. And more was to come. Only Tom Cruise can match him as the biggest box-office draw of them all.

Thomas J. Hanks was born on July 9th, 1956, in Concord, California, a direct descendant of an uncle of Nancy Hanks, the mother of Abraham Lincoln. His parents split when he was young, the details of their divorce making them "pioneers in the development of marriage dissolution in California". Tom and his two older siblings, Sandra and Larry, went with their father, Amos, a chef. A younger brother, Jim, stayed with mother Janet (Jim would later appear in several of Tom's productions, including acting as his running double in Forrest Gump). Dad's work enforced a nomadic existence upon them, with the kids shifted from school to school, never able to form lasting friendships, making Hanks painfully shy. It didn't help that Amos was married twice after Janet, Tom explaining that, by the age of 10, he'd had "three mothers, five grammar schools and ten houses".

Eventually, in 1966, Amos settled in Oakland, where Tom had to get used to a new mother and new siblings. Here he attended both junior high and Skyline High School, where he indulged his early interests in space and baseball, excelled at soccer and on the track and "became the loud one" - a trick he'd learned when trying to get attention in a succession of new schools.
It was at Skyline that he became interested in acting. Impressed by a buddy in a school production of Dracula, he joined the Thespian Club and forced his way in by sheer weight of enthusiasm. First he was stage manager on My Fair Lady, then won roles in Night Of The Iguana, Twelfth Night and South Pacific, the last of these winning him Skyline's Best Actor of 1974 award.

On graduation, he enrolled at Chabot College, close by in Hayward, working as a sideline as a bellboy at the local Hilton. Doing the occasional drama class, he was required at one point to attend a Berkeley Repertory Company performance of Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh. It proved a formative experience, with young Tom wholly taken by the performance of Joe Spano who'd recently appeared in American Graffiti (he'd later show up in Hanks' own Apollo 13 and From The Earth To The Moon). Tom decided there and then that he wanted to be as good as Spano.

After two years at Chabot, he transferred to California State University in Sacramento. Here he made two vital connections. First was with Susan Dillingham, who'd later take Samantha Lewes as her stage name and become Tom's first wife. Then there was Vincent Dowling. Tom had been trying to get into university stage productions to no avail, being forced to content himself with set-building. Frustrated, he auditioned for a local theatre production of Chekov's The Cherry Orchard, winning the role of Yasha. Dowling, the director, was so impressed he invited Hanks to join him at the Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival in Cleveland, of which he was artistic director.

So, in the summer of 1977, off Tom went for his first taste of professional acting, earning $210 a week as Gremio in The Taming Of The Shrew. Samantha would join him, the pair moving in together. With the company touring into December, Tom went AWOL from Cal State - he never returned. Instead, he took work at the Civic Theatre in Sacramento, learning all the backstage mechanics of the trade. Then, in the summer of '78, he returned to Cleveland, playing Proteus in Two Gentlemen Of Verona and winning a Best Actor award from the Cleveland Critics Circle.

Aged just 22 and picking up major awards already - how could he fail? Tom took off for New York City and the bright lights of Broadway, taking an apartment with Samantha in Hell's Kitchen. But there was no work - just extra pressure as Samantha gave birth to their first child, Colin (now an actor in his own right, starring in Orange County). Keen for employment, Hanks returned to the Great Lakes Festival for the summer of 1979, to play Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream. His former director, Dowling, would later claim "He was the best Shakespearian clown I ever knew, because he was seriously real and seriously funny at the same time". It was this "realness" and humour that would eventually turn Hanks into a megastar.

Returning to New York in late '79, Tom found work at the Riverside Shakespeare Theatre, as Callimaco in The Mandrake. More importantly, he got a manager, and this led to his first screen role, amazingly in the infamous slasher flick He Knows You're Alone, where a psycho's menacing a bridal party. Well, it was a start.

January, 1980, brought the first really big break. The ABC network had launched a talent development programme in the hope of finding some hot young kids to pep up their ratings. Tom went for it, enduring a gruelling series of auditions before landing one of the two leads in the sit-com Bosom Buddies. Here Peter Scolari and Tom played two ad execs, Henry Desmond and Kip Wilson, who can't find an apartment. Then, when they do, it's in a women-only building, meaning they must continually cross-dress and call themselves Hildegard and Buffy (that's right, Tom Hanks played a girl called Buffy YEARS before Sarah Michelle Gellar). It was a cute idea, but not one that would run and run. Bosom Buddies lasted for two seasons, Scolari later turning up in Tom's That Thing You Do! And From The Earth To The Moon.

In the meantime, Tom had moved the family to the San Fernando Valley, Samantha giving birth to daughter Elizabeth. With Bosom Buddies over, Tom had to look elsewhere, and nabbed brief spots on Michael J. Fox's Family Ties, The Love Boat and, vitally, Happy Days. There he met Richie Cunningham, or rather Ron Howard, then launching as career as a director. When Howard was casting for his next film, Splash, about a sweet guy's love affair with a mermaid, he called up Hanks to test for a supporting role. So good was he that he got the lead instead, the lesser role going to John Candy.

Splash, which saw Hanks hankering after Daryl Hannah, made Tom a minor star, and kept him employed throughout the mid-Eighties. The roustabout Bachelor Party was a commercial success, then came Volunteers, where he played a debt-ridden playboy joining the Peace Corps in Thailand. This saw him alongside Candy once more, and also one Rita Wilson, who he'd earlier met when she popped up as Peter Scolari's Satan-worshipping girlfriend in Bosom Buddies. Next came The Man With One Red Shoe, where Tom was a dopey violinist caught up in intra-CIA shenanigans, and the hilarious The Money Pit, where he and Shelley Long have their house renovated, only to see it gradually collapse around their ears. There'd also be Nothing In Common, where he looked after his sick father (a bit close to the bone, this one, as Amos by this time suffered from the kidney failure that would kill him), and Every Time We Say Goodbye, set in Jerusalem, 1942, where he fell for a girl whose parents disapprove of him. The last of these proved that Tom could manage a romantic lead in a "serious" movie. It also earned him his first $1 million paycheck.

But, though Tom's career was on the up and up, his marriage was falling apart. Not wanting his kids to suffer as he had done, he took a break from film-making in 1985 to produce, direct AND build sets for a production of The Passing Game at the Gene Dynarski Theatre, with his wife Samantha co-producing and starring. It didn't work. By the end of the year, Tom and Samantha were separated.

Despite the break, Tom was getting ever hotter. Dragnet, a semi-spoof of the old TV cop show, was fairly lame but a financial success. Then came Punchline, where he played Stephen Gold, a bitter and angry comedian who first abuses then helps housewife Sally Field as she attempts to learn the comic craft. For research, Hanks wrote his own material and tried it out live at various LA comedy clubs.

And then came the first big one, appropriately titled Big, directed by another sitcom star turned director, Penny Marshall (Laverne from Laverne and Shirley). As Josh Baskin, a kid trapped in a man's body, working for a toy company and winning the heart of cold exec Elizabeth Perkins, Hanks was hyperactive, endlessly curious, near-perfect, and Oscar-nominated for the first time. Incredible, given he was third choice, behind Harrison Ford and Robert De Niro. Big would be his first $100 million hit. Many more would follow.

Hanks' profile rose steadily as a suspicious suburbanite in The 'Burbs, as a cop with a doggy partner in Turner And Hooch, and Joe Versus The Volcano, where he played a goofy guy who, with a short while to live, gets a rich man to pay him to jump into an active volcano. This last movie paired him for the first time with Meg Ryan, later co-star in two of his biggest hits. But then Hanks' ability to survive poor movies unscathed was sorely challenged when he played Sherman McCoy, the "master of the universe" and stock-trader drawn into a racial controversy after a hit-and-run accident in Brian De Palma's expensive, gaudy Bonfire Of The Vanities. The movie was considered one of the worst flops in history, threatening to finish him for good.

Fortunately, by now his personal life was coming together. With his first marriage over, Tom was free to date Rita Wilson, and the couple were wed, with son Chester being born in 1990, followed by another boy, Truman. Having learned from experience what a heavy workload can do to a relationship, he took a couple of years off, enjoying his new family and waiting for the right part to kick-start his career.

The right part came soon, alongside Geena Davis and Madonna, in Marshall's A League Of Their Own - the first in an outrageous run of hits. Here he played Jimmy Dugan, a former baseball star who's lost his career to injury and consoled himself with heavy drinking. Given a chance at redemption, he finds himself in charge of a women's baseball side which, after much comic incompetence, he inspires to become one of the finest ever.

Next, paired with Ryan once again, came Sleepless In Seattle. Here he was a sweet and kind widower who cannot find a woman to match his dear departed. When his young son contacts a radio show, Tom talks of love on-air and attracts the attention of a romantically confused Ryan. And so, amidst a welter of coincidences and near-misses, the couple are drawn ever closer together. Funny, witty and not overly sentimental, as well as well-conceived and paced by writer/director Nora Ephron, it was a massive hit, and featured a natty cameo by Tom's wife Rita.

And 1993 brought yet more success to Hanks. The often harrowing Philadelphia saw him as lawyer Andrew Beckett who, sacked when he contracts AIDS, sues for discrimination and takes on Denzel Washington as his lawyer. With Denzel's character being a major homophobe, director Jonathan Demme was able to attack prejudice and promote justice in a mainstream fashion, rather than delving into the gay lifestyle. Some gay activists complained, but Hanks' brilliant performance and a stirring storyline gave the fight against AIDS some of the best publicity it ever had. Tom was duly presented with an Oscar and, incredibly, his acceptance speech, where he thanked his old teacher at Skyline, Rawley T. Farnsworth, inspired another movie, Kevin Kline's In And Out.

Then it got even better. 1994's epic Forrest Gump had him as an idiot savant raising hearts and minds over a 40-year period, including the Vietnam war. Gary Sinise added grit as an embittered vet, damaged inside and out, while Sally Field reappeared, this time as Tom's doting mum, the one who teaches him such world-altering pearls as "Life is like a box of chocolates". With its home-spun wisdom and relentless humanity, Forrest Gump was beyond feel-good. And it cleaned up, with Tom winning another Oscar, making him the first man in 55 years (since Spencer Tracy) to win consecutive Best Actor statues.

Normally when actors hit such peaks they fall away, at least for a while. Not Hanks. 1995 was another scorcher. First he provided the voice of Sheriff Woody in the brilliant Toy Story. Then he was back with Ron Howard as Jim Lovell in Apollo 13, intoning the immortal line "Houston, we have a problem" and presenting the emotional side of the struggle to bring the damaged spacecraft back to Earth. With Hanks still obsessed with space, it must have been a real joy. It's a wonder that he hadn't demanded the part of Buzz Lightyear.

Though Forrest Gump and Apollo 13 made $500 million between them, Tom now took his foot off the pedal and concentrated on his own thing. Turning down the part of Jerry Maguire, he turned to writing and directing with That Thing You Do!, about Sixties one-hit wonders The Wonders. It was nice and engaging - far away from the Oscar-winning extravaganzas that were now dominating his life.

But he couldn't stay away for long. 1998 brought You've Got Mail, another rom-com, reuniting him with Ephron and Ryan. Then he starred in a real event movie, Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan. Here he was Captain John Miller, leading a small band of brothers through Occupied France in search of Matt Damon's Private Ryan, and this after having survived the terrifying mayhem of the D-Day landings. It was another triumph, with Tom Oscar-nominated once more. He'd also be given the Distinguished Public Service Award, the highest honour the US Navy can confer upon a civilian.

Such was Saving Private Ryan's effect that Hanks and Spielberg felt the need to do it all over again, with the award-winning miniseries Band Of Brothers. Before this, though, Tom would score again with Toy Story 2 and Stephen King's The Green Mile, wherein he played Paul Edgecomb, a kind-hearted guard of Death Row who realises that the condemned Michael Clarke Duncan might be some kind of mystic healer. A year later came Cast Away, reuniting him with Gump director Robert Zemeckis, when he played Fed Ex exec Chuck Noland, marooned on a desert island after a particularly frightening plane crash. As mentioned before, for much of the movie we see only Hanks, and we're just watching his battle for survival as he seldom says anything (though he does talk to a volleyball called Wilson - as in Rita Wilson). It's proof of Hanks ability and charm that we don't care - he says it all without words, well deserving his fifth Oscar nomination.

But it wasn't just Oscar nods that came his way. Back in '98, Hanks had also returned to writing and directing, as well as producing, with From The Earth To The Moon. This, revisiting his old obsession with infinity and beyond, was one of the biggest miniseries ever made, a drama-documentary covering the NASA space programme of the Sixties and Seventies. It would win an Emmy as Outstanding Series, with Tom (who co-wrote 4 of the 12 episodes) being nominated for his directing of the first instalment. His old mucker Sally Field was also involved as co-director.

2002 was another monster year. First came Sam Mendes' Road To Perdition. Here Hanks played Michael Sullivan, a hitman for mobster Paul Newman. Cold and utterly ruthless, he's nevertheless forced to revise his attitudes when his young son witnesses one of his killings and, of course, must be eliminated. To prevent this, Sullivan takes the kid on the lam, pursued by Jude Law's implacable assassin Maguire. After this came Catch Me If You Can, pairing Hanks with Spielberg yet again, with Tom as FBI agent Carl Hanratty, cooly tracking down Leonardo DiCaprio's Frank Abagnale, a con man and master of disguise. It was another mighty hit, taking $164 million at the US box-office, on a budget of only $52 million.

Incredibly, this wasn't all for 2002. Tom also co-produced the comedy My Big Fat Greek Wedding, which cost $5 million and, having spent 20 weeks slowly climbing the charts, made well over $50 million at the US box-office alone. AND there was a cameo in the long-awaited Rutles follow-up, Can't Buy Me Lunch.

2004 would see his next assault on the box-office, but would also see an end to his remarkable dominance. The Ladykillers was a typically outlandish Coen Brothers remake of the old Alec Guinness hit, with Hanks starring as Goldthwait Higginson Dorr, a bizarre Southerner claiming to be a classics professor and dressing somewhat like Colonel Sanders. Taking rooms in a little old lady's house, he recruits an oddball crew and, pretending they are a musical ensemble, plots to rob a nearby casino. The movie wasn't a success, it was too cliched and brash, but, though it dropped out of the Top 10 after only two weeks, it still slipped into profit and Hanks, managing to keep Dorr's florid speech just this side of ridiculous, continued to push at his own boundaries.

Quickly after this came another reunion with Spielberg and another character guaranteed to capture the heart of the US audience. In The Terminal, he played an eastern European arriving at JFK airport to find that his country has fallen in a coup and his passport and visa are now worthless. Thus he cannot go home or step onto American soil and must stay in the International Departures lounge. Returning abandoned luggage trolleys for quarters, he soon learns how to survive, and becomes important to all the staff (including hostess Catherine Zeta-Jones), winning them over with his trusting, trustworthy, near-Gump-like manner. It was a fine comedy, delicate and brilliantly timed, particularly in Hanks' dealings with frustrated customs officer Stanley Tucci, and held up well against a string of summer blockbusters.

Next, as a favour to Joel Zwick who'd directed My Big Fat Greek Wedding and had earlier helmed episodes of Hanks' Bosom Buddies, he'd pop up in the bizarro comedy Elvis Has Left The Building, playing one of several Elvis impersonators accidentally killed by Kim Basinger. He'd end 2004 by lending his voice and animated appearance to Robert Zemeckis's animated Christmas parable The Polar Express, an enormously expensive filmic experiment costing over $150 million. Naturally, with Hanks on board, it still went into profit.

Having in 2005 been elected as the new Vice President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Hanks would next snap up one of the more coveted roles in recent times when he reunited with director Ron Howard for The Da Vinci Code. Based on Dan Brown's bestseller, this would see him as a fusty academic teaming up with ---- cryptologist Audrey Tautou and getting drawn into a hugely convoluted conspiracy involving murderous albinos, secret Christian sects and the Holy Grail.

If his extraordinary run of hits isn't proof enough of the respect he's garnered from peers and public alike, consider this: when Steven Spielberg, the biggest director in the world, wants a hero, someone could can play a good guy in a bad position and somehow make it interesting, he calls Hanks. And when Sam Mendes, perhaps the hippest director out there, needed someone to pull off a cold-hearted murderer who also loves his son, he called Hanks too. We all know he can play a loving father with his brain disengaged, but he's hardly known for his murderers. But what he IS known for is his acting. Of COURSE he can do a murderer. He's TOM HANKS, for Christ's sake.

Dominic Wills

The most likeable star of his generation, Tom Hanks is a throwback to the days when James Stewart and Gary Cooper lorded it over Hollywood. Whether he's playing a 35-year-old kid, a simpleton from Alabama, a sullen soldier, a mobster hitman or even a lawyer suffering from AIDS, people react well to him - he possesses an all-too-rare nice-guy charm. He's willing to put that charm to the test, too. In Cast Away, for well over an hour, we saw nothing but Hanks - no pretty love interest, no wisecracking sidekick, not even a comedy dog. And, such is the weight Hanks carries with a worldwide audience, such is the skill he has developed over two decades plying his trade, he pulled it off. Cast Away was another huge hit, his 11th in nine years. And more was to come. Only Tom Cruise can match him as the biggest box-office draw of them all.

Thomas J. Hanks was born on July 9th, 1956, in Concord, California, a direct descendant of an uncle of Nancy Hanks, the mother of Abraham Lincoln. His parents split when he was young, the details of their divorce making them "pioneers in the development of marriage dissolution in California". Tom and his two older siblings, Sandra and Larry, went with their father, Amos, a chef. A younger brother, Jim, stayed with mother Janet (Jim would later appear in several of Tom's productions, including acting as his running double in Forrest Gump). Dad's work enforced a nomadic existence upon them, with the kids shifted from school to school, never able to form lasting friendships, making Hanks painfully shy. It didn't help that Amos was married twice after Janet, Tom explaining that, by the age of 10, he'd had "three mothers, five grammar schools and ten houses".

Eventually, in 1966, Amos settled in Oakland, where Tom had to get used to a new mother and new siblings. Here he attended both junior high and Skyline High School, where he indulged his early interests in space and baseball, excelled at soccer and on the track and "became the loud one" - a trick he'd learned when trying to get attention in a succession of new schools.
It was at Skyline that he became interested in acting. Impressed by a buddy in a school production of Dracula, he joined the Thespian Club and forced his way in by sheer weight of enthusiasm. First he was stage manager on My Fair Lady, then won roles in Night Of The Iguana, Twelfth Night and South Pacific, the last of these winning him Skyline's Best Actor of 1974 award.

On graduation, he enrolled at Chabot College, close by in Hayward, working as a sideline as a bellboy at the local Hilton. Doing the occasional drama class, he was required at one point to attend a Berkeley Repertory Company performance of Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh. It proved a formative experience, with young Tom wholly taken by the performance of Joe Spano who'd recently appeared in American Graffiti (he'd later show up in Hanks' own Apollo 13 and From The Earth To The Moon). Tom decided there and then that he wanted to be as good as Spano.

After two years at Chabot, he transferred to California State University in Sacramento. Here he made two vital connections. First was with Susan Dillingham, who'd later take Samantha Lewes as her stage name and become Tom's first wife. Then there was Vincent Dowling. Tom had been trying to get into university stage productions to no avail, being forced to content himself with set-building. Frustrated, he auditioned for a local theatre production of Chekov's The Cherry Orchard, winning the role of Yasha. Dowling, the director, was so impressed he invited Hanks to join him at the Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival in Cleveland, of which he was artistic director.

So, in the summer of 1977, off Tom went for his first taste of professional acting, earning $210 a week as Gremio in The Taming Of The Shrew. Samantha would join him, the pair moving in together. With the company touring into December, Tom went AWOL from Cal State - he never returned. Instead, he took work at the Civic Theatre in Sacramento, learning all the backstage mechanics of the trade. Then, in the summer of '78, he returned to Cleveland, playing Proteus in Two Gentlemen Of Verona and winning a Best Actor award from the Cleveland Critics Circle.
Aged just 22 and picking up major awards already - how could he fail? Tom took off for New York City and the bright lights of Broadway, taking an apartment with Samantha in Hell's Kitchen. But there was no work - just extra pressure as Samantha gave birth to their first child, Colin (now an actor in his own right, starring in Orange County). Keen for employment, Hanks returned to the Great Lakes Festival for the summer of 1979, to play Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream. His former director, Dowling, would later claim "He was the best Shakespearian clown I ever knew, because he was seriously real and seriously funny at the same time". It was this "realness" and humour that would eventually turn Hanks into a megastar.

Returning to New York in late '79, Tom found work at the Riverside Shakespeare Theatre, as Callimaco in The Mandrake. More importantly, he got a manager, and this led to his first screen role, amazingly in the infamous slasher flick He Knows You're Alone, where a psycho's menacing a bridal party. Well, it was a start.

January, 1980, brought the first really big break. The ABC network had launched a talent development programme in the hope of finding some hot young kids to pep up their ratings. Tom went for it, enduring a gruelling series of auditions before landing one of the two leads in the sit-com Bosom Buddies. Here Peter Scolari and Tom played two ad execs, Henry Desmond and Kip Wilson, who can't find an apartment. Then, when they do, it's in a women-only building, meaning they must continually cross-dress and call themselves Hildegard and Buffy (that's right, Tom Hanks played a girl called Buffy YEARS before Sarah Michelle Gellar). It was a cute idea, but not one that would run and run. Bosom Buddies lasted for two seasons, Scolari later turning up in Tom's That Thing You Do! And From The Earth To The Moon.

In the meantime, Tom had moved the family to the San Fernando Valley, Samantha giving birth to daughter Elizabeth. With Bosom Buddies over, Tom had to look elsewhere, and nabbed brief spots on Michael J. Fox's Family Ties, The Love Boat and, vitally, Happy Days. There he met Richie Cunningham, or rather Ron Howard, then launching as career as a director. When Howard was casting for his next film, Splash, about a sweet guy's love affair with a mermaid, he called up Hanks to test for a supporting role. So good was he that he got the lead instead, the lesser role going to
John Candy.
Splash, which saw Hanks hankering after Daryl Hannah, made Tom a minor star, and kept him employed throughout the mid-Eighties. The roustabout Bachelor Party was a commercial success, then came Volunteers, where he played a debt-ridden playboy joining the Peace Corps in Thailand. This saw him alongside Candy once more, and also one Rita Wilson, who he'd earlier met when she popped up as Peter Scolari's Satan-worshipping girlfriend in Bosom Buddies. Next came The Man With One Red Shoe, where Tom was a dopey violinist caught up in intra-CIA shenanigans, and the hilarious The Money Pit, where he and Shelley Long have their house renovated, only to see it gradually collapse around their ears. There'd also be Nothing In Common, where he looked after his sick father (a bit close to the bone, this one, as Amos by this time suffered from the kidney failure that would kill him), and Every Time We Say Goodbye, set in Jerusalem, 1942, where he fell for a girl whose parents disapprove of him. The last of these proved that Tom could manage a romantic lead in a "serious" movie. It also earned him his first $1 million paycheck.

But, though Tom's career was on the up and up, his marriage was falling apart. Not wanting his kids to suffer as he had done, he took a break from film-making in 1985 to produce, direct AND build sets for a production of The Passing Game at the Gene Dynarski Theatre, with his wife Samantha co-producing and starring. It didn't work. By the end of the year, Tom and Samantha were separated.

Despite the break, Tom was getting ever hotter. Dragnet, a semi-spoof of the old TV cop show, was fairly lame but a financial success. Then came Punchline, where he played Stephen Gold, a bitter and angry comedian who first abuses then helps housewife Sally Field as she attempts to learn the comic craft. For research, Hanks wrote his own material and tried it out live at various LA comedy clubs.

And then came the first big one, appropriately titled Big, directed by another sitcom star turned director, Penny Marshall (Laverne from Laverne and Shirley). As Josh Baskin, a kid trapped in a man's body, working for a toy company and winning the heart of cold exec Elizabeth Perkins, Hanks was hyperactive, endlessly curious, near-perfect, and Oscar-nominated for the first time. Incredible, given he was third choice, behind Harrison Ford and Robert De Niro. Big would be his first $100 million hit. Many more would follow.

Hanks' profile rose steadily as a suspicious suburbanite in The 'Burbs, as a cop with a doggy partner in Turner And Hooch, and Joe Versus The Volcano, where he played a goofy guy who, with a short while to live, gets a rich man to pay him to jump into an active volcano. This last movie paired him for the first time with Meg Ryan, later co-star in two of his biggest hits. But then Hanks' ability to survive poor movies unscathed was sorely challenged when he played Sherman McCoy, the "master of the universe" and stock-trader drawn into a racial controversy after a hit-and-run accident in Brian De Palma's expensive, gaudy Bonfire Of The Vanities. The movie was considered one of the worst flops in history, threatening to finish him for good.
Fortunately, by now his personal life was coming together. With his first marriage over, Tom was free to date Rita Wilson, and the couple were wed, with son Chester being born in 1990, followed by another boy, Truman. Having learned from experience what a heavy workload can do to a relationship, he took a couple of years off, enjoying his new family and waiting for the right part to kick-start his career.

The right part came soon, alongside Geena Davis and Madonna, in Marshall's A League Of Their Own - the first in an outrageous run of hits. Here he played Jimmy Dugan, a former baseball star who's lost his career to injury and consoled himself with heavy drinking. Given a chance at redemption, he finds himself in charge of a women's baseball side which, after much comic incompetence, he inspires to become one of the finest ever.

Next, paired with Ryan once again, came Sleepless In Seattle. Here he was a sweet and kind widower who cannot find a woman to match his dear departed. When his young son contacts a radio show, Tom talks of love on-air and attracts the attention of a romantically confused Ryan. And so, amidst a welter of coincidences and near-misses, the couple are drawn ever closer together. Funny, witty and not overly sentimental, as well as well-conceived and paced by writer/director Nora Ephron, it was a massive hit, and featured a natty cameo by Tom's wife Rita.

And 1993 brought yet more success to Hanks. The often harrowing Philadelphia saw him as lawyer Andrew Beckett who, sacked when he contracts AIDS, sues for discrimination and takes on Denzel Washington as his lawyer. With Denzel's character being a major homophobe, director Jonathan Demme was able to attack prejudice and promote justice in a mainstream fashion, rather than delving into the gay lifestyle. Some gay activists complained, but Hanks' brilliant performance and a stirring storyline gave the fight against AIDS some of the best publicity it ever had. Tom was duly presented with an Oscar and, incredibly, his acceptance speech, where he thanked his old teacher at Skyline, Rawley T. Farnsworth, inspired another movie, Kevin Kline's In And Out.

Then it got even better. 1994's epic Forrest Gump had him as an idiot savant raising hearts and minds over a 40-year period, including the Vietnam war. Gary Sinise added grit as an embittered vet, damaged inside and out, while Sally Field reappeared, this time as Tom's doting mum, the one who teaches him such world-altering pearls as "Life is like a box of chocolates". With its home-spun wisdom and relentless humanity, Forrest Gump was beyond feel-good. And it cleaned up, with Tom winning another Oscar, making him the first man in 55 years (since Spencer Tracy) to win consecutive Best Actor statues.
Normally when actors hit such peaks they fall away, at least for a while. Not Hanks. 1995 was another scorcher. First he provided the voice of Sheriff Woody in the brilliant Toy Story. Then he was back with Ron Howard as Jim Lovell in Apollo 13, intoning the immortal line "Houston, we have a problem" and presenting the emotional side of the struggle to bring the damaged spacecraft back to Earth. With Hanks still obsessed with space, it must have been a real joy. It's a wonder that he hadn't demanded the part of Buzz Lightyear.

Though Forrest Gump and Apollo 13 made $500 million between them, Tom now took his foot off the pedal and concentrated on his own thing. Turning down the part of Jerry Maguire, he turned to writing and directing with That Thing You Do!, about Sixties one-hit wonders The Wonders. It was nice and engaging - far away from the Oscar-winning extravaganzas that were now dominating his life.

But he couldn't stay away for long. 1998 brought You've Got Mail, another rom-com, reuniting him with Ephron and Ryan. Then he starred in a real event movie, Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan. Here he was Captain John Miller, leading a small band of brothers through Occupied France in search of Matt Damon's Private Ryan, and this after having survived the terrifying mayhem of the D-Day landings. It was another triumph, with Tom Oscar-nominated once more. He'd also be given the Distinguished Public Service Award, the highest honour the US Navy can confer upon a civilian.

Such was Saving Private Ryan's effect that Hanks and Spielberg felt the need to do it all over again, with the award-winning miniseries Band Of Brothers. Before this, though, Tom would score again with Toy Story 2 and Stephen King's The Green Mile, wherein he played Paul Edgecomb, a kind-hearted guard of Death Row who realises that the condemned Michael Clarke Duncan might be some kind of mystic healer. A year later came Cast Away, reuniting him with Gump director Robert Zemeckis, when he played Fed Ex exec Chuck Noland, marooned on a desert island after a particularly frightening plane crash. As mentioned before, for much of the movie we see only Hanks, and we're just watching his battle for survival as he seldom says anything (though he does talk to a volleyball called Wilson - as in Rita Wilson). It's proof of Hanks ability and charm that we don't care - he says it all without words, well deserving his fifth Oscar nomination.
But it wasn't just Oscar nods that came his way. Back in '98, Hanks had also returned to writing and directing, as well as producing, with From The Earth To The Moon. This, revisiting his old obsession with infinity and beyond, was one of the biggest miniseries ever made, a drama-documentary covering the NASA space programme of the Sixties and Seventies. It would win an Emmy as Outstanding Series, with Tom (who co-wrote 4 of the 12 episodes) being nominated for his directing of the first instalment. His old mucker Sally Field was also involved as co-director.

2002 was another monster year. First came Sam Mendes' Road To Perdition. Here Hanks played Michael Sullivan, a hitman for mobster Paul Newman. Cold and utterly ruthless, he's nevertheless forced to revise his attitudes when his young son witnesses one of his killings and, of course, must be eliminated. To prevent this, Sullivan takes the kid on the lam, pursued by Jude Law's implacable assassin Maguire. After this came Catch Me If You Can, pairing Hanks with Spielberg yet again, with Tom as FBI agent Carl Hanratty, cooly tracking down Leonardo DiCaprio's Frank Abagnale, a con man and master of disguise. It was another mighty hit, taking $164 million at the US box-office, on a budget of only $52 million.

Incredibly, this wasn't all for 2002. Tom also co-produced the comedy My Big Fat Greek Wedding, which cost $5 million and, having spent 20 weeks slowly climbing the charts, made well over $50 million at the US box-office alone. AND there was a cameo in the long-awaited Rutles follow-up, Can't Buy Me Lunch.

2004 would see his next assault on the box-office, but would also see an end to his remarkable dominance. The Ladykillers was a typically outlandish Coen Brothers remake of the old Alec Guinness hit, with Hanks starring as Goldthwait Higginson Dorr, a bizarre Southerner claiming to be a classics professor and dressing somewhat like Colonel Sanders. Taking rooms in a little old lady's house, he recruits an oddball crew and, pretending they are a musical ensemble, plots to rob a nearby casino. The movie wasn't a success, it was too cliched and brash, but, though it dropped out of the Top 10 after only two weeks, it still slipped into profit and Hanks, managing to keep Dorr's florid speech just this side of ridiculous, continued to push at his own boundaries.
Quickly after this came another reunion with Spielberg and another character guaranteed to capture the heart of the US audience. In The Terminal, he played an eastern European arriving at JFK airport to find that his country has fallen in a coup and his passport and visa are now worthless. Thus he cannot go home or step onto American soil and must stay in the International Departures lounge. Returning abandoned luggage trolleys for quarters, he soon learns how to survive, and becomes important to all the staff (including hostess Catherine Zeta-Jones), winning them over with his trusting, trustworthy, near-Gump-like manner. It was a fine comedy, delicate and brilliantly timed, particularly in Hanks' dealings with frustrated customs officer Stanley Tucci, and held up well against a string of summer blockbusters.

Next, as a favour to Joel Zwick who'd directed My Big Fat Greek Wedding and had earlier helmed episodes of Hanks' Bosom Buddies, he'd pop up in the bizarro comedy Elvis Has Left The Building, playing one of several Elvis impersonators accidentally killed by Kim Basinger. He'd end 2004 by lending his voice and animated appearance to Robert Zemeckis's animated Christmas parable The Polar Express, an enormously expensive filmic experiment costing over $150 million. Naturally, with Hanks on board, it still went into profit.

Having in 2005 been elected as the new Vice President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Hanks would next snap up one of the more coveted roles in recent times when he reunited with director Ron Howard for The Da Vinci Code. Based on Dan Brown's bestseller, this would see him as a fusty academic teaming up with ---- cryptologist Audrey Tautou and getting drawn into a hugely convoluted conspiracy involving murderous albinos, secret Christian sects and the Holy Grail.

If his extraordinary run of hits isn't proof enough of the respect he's garnered from peers and public alike, consider this: when Steven Spielberg, the biggest director in the world, wants a hero, someone could can play a good guy in a bad position and somehow make it interesting, he calls Hanks. And when Sam Mendes, perhaps the hippest director out there, needed someone to pull off a cold-hearted murderer who also loves his son, he called Hanks too. We all know he can play a loving father with his brain disengaged, but he's hardly known for his murderers. But what he IS known for is his acting. Of COURSE he can do a murderer. He's TOM HANKS, for Christ's sake.

[Man Hunter]

Céline, the baby among 14 brothers and sisters , was born on March 30th, 1968 in Charlemagne, Quèbec, Canada. Her name comes from a song that her mother sang during the pregnancy. Céline grew up with music all around her: her parents had a pianobar in the city; her mother played the violin, her father played the accordion and her brothers and sisters sang and served at the tables. She started singing in the pianobar when she was five, and after a while she became a celebrity in the town. At the age of 12 she told her mother she wanted to sing. Mrs. Therese Dion contacted René Angélil, one of the most famous managers in Montreal, who cried during Céline's audition due to her magnificent voice. René paid for her first album recording, mortgaging his house; and in November 1994 -with the releasing of THE COLOUR OF MY LOVE- Céline disclosed to the world her love for René who is 26 years older! They got married on December 17th, 1994.
1981_The French writer Eddy Marnay writes for Céline lyrics and music of LA VOIX DU BON DIEU in France. This title represents Marnay's exclamation when he listened to Céline's demo tape for the first time. In 1981 Céline begins her career and in this year the first Christmas album -CÉLINE CHANTE NOEL- is released.

1982_ TELLEMENT J'AI D'AMOUR POUR TOI (and in October also a single) comes out in stores. As France representative Céline wins the Golden Medal in the World Popular Music Festival in Tokyo, singing for 115 million spectators and beating 1907 candidates! And so she receives recognition from all over the world

1983_ Céline represents Canada in the MIDEM, she appears on French TV, releases an album, sings with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, and a book about her: LA NAISSANCE D'UNE ETOILE comes out. She wins a Golden Record, LES CHEMINS DE MA MAISON and DU SOLEIL AU COEUR come out in Québec, she wins 4 more Awards and CHANTS ET CONTES DE NOEL is released.

1984_The German version of a single and the new album MELANIE come out. She sings for the Pope in the Olympic Stadium in Montreal and the first success compilation ( LES PLUS GRANDS SUCCES DE CÉLINE DION) comes out, part of the proceeds goes to medical research. LES OISEAUX DU BONHEUR comes out in France also. She wins 2 Felix Award.

1985_Céline plays a tour in Québec from which came CÉLINE DION EN CONCERT. With other artists she records a single with the proceeds donated to the starving in Etiopea. At the end of the summer is released the 8th Canadian album: C'EST POUR TOI; and C'EST POUR VIVRE comes out. She wins 5 Felix Awards and she takes part in the soundtrack of THE PEANUT BUTTER SOLUTION, and in her first videoclip! This year Céline and René create their own society: Les Productions Feeling Inc.

1986_Céline takes a rest for 18 months and changes her look from teenager to young woman. Two singles in France and the compilation LES CHANSONS EN OR in Québec come out.

1987_ She comes back with a more pop look and a big contract with CBS. In April INCOGNITO is released and in September a TV Special of over one hour laies down her official backcoming in the music world.

1988_ Céline becomes a MetroStar Awards for under 25 artists. She plays 42 following concerts at the Saint Denis Teather in Montreal. In Ireland she wins the Eurovision Song Contest with NE PARTEZ PAS SANS MOI And in France come out THE BEST OF VIVRE and INCOGNITO. She wins 4 Felix Awards and in Germany the VIVRE album is released.

1989_In this moment Céline's international career begins, and she studies English at the Berlitz School. She records 3 duets

1990_UNISON album catapults her on the international level in the USA and in English-speaking Canada. She wins the Golden Record in the USA, becomes an ADISQ Award as English Singer Of The Year, but, disagreeing with the jury, she refuses the recognition. She gets 2 Juno Awards for Female Vocalist Of The Year and Album Of The Year, receives the Platinum Ticket for the tour "Céline Dion".

1991_She is chosen to sing a song in S. Spielberg's FIEVEL GOES WEST, but she prefers W. Disney's BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (performing with Peabo Bryson). WHERE DOES MY HEART BEAT NOW goes up to number 4 in the Billboard Magazine chart. She presents the AMERICAN MUSIC AWARDS. In March she debuts in DES FLEURS SUR LA NEIGE comedy, where she has the main role. In Toronto she gets an award for "Singer Of The Year" and for "Album Of The Year" with UNISON album. Wins a Grammy Award for BEAUTY AND THE BEAST soundtrack. A 3-hour Special about Céline is produced and broadcast; she celebrates her 10 years career with a big tour in Québec; records the song VOICES THAT CARE and its clip with other artists for the army forces during the Gulf war. In fall is released an album dedicated to Luc Plamondon, author with Michel Berger of the rock opera STARMANIA. The album comes out in Québec as DION CHANTE PLAMONDON and in France as DES MOTS QUI SONNENT. In fall she gets one more Felix Award and a recognition from the UNION DES ARTISTES. Céline sings for Prince Charles and Princess Diana. Signs a 10-million dollars contract with Sony Music for 5 albums in 10 years; with the releasing of FALLING INTO YOU (1996) it is exhausted in less than 5 years!

1992_In May Céline gets the World Music Award in Montecarlo; in June gets the Award as Best Singer Of The Year. Wins the Oscar for BEAUTY AND THE BEAST sountrack; CÉLINE DION album is released; plays an American tour with Michael Bolton; gets one more Golden Record in the USA, which is the second of two ones released in the States. After a little time this album become a Platinum one ! She sings in Sevilla and plays a tour in Japan, Australia and Europe. Takes part in a concert organized by Walt Disney to help children with AIDS. She wins 2 Felix Awards and a recognition from the Governor General for her contribution to Canadian culture. She sings some songs for TYCOON, the English version of Starmania, the rock opera by Luc Plamondon and Michel Berger, with (among others) Tom Jones and Cyndi Lauper.

1993_Céline gets the Personality Of The Year Award. Sings for President Clinton; gets the Billboard Magazine recognition; records a 90 minutes Special for Disney; wins 2 ADISQ Awards; sings the ending song of SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE. THE COLOUR OF MY LOVE is released ; Sony Music deals LES PREMIÈRES ANNÉES: a 1982-1987 compilation of her successes. She gets an Oscar for BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, 2 Felix Awards and 4 Juno Awards.

1994_With THE POWER OF LOVE Céline goes up to the top in the Hot 100 singles charts for 4 weeks: it's the 50th succes (in importance order) of all time. She takes part in the Jackson Family Special; gets (for the 4th consecutive year) the Juno Award as Best Female Vocalist, she gets a Grammy Award for SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE, 3 Felix Awards and the Cable Ace Award for THE COLOUR OF MY LOVE TV Special as Best Music Special in the USA; records CÉLINE DION A L'OLYMPIA; gets a Diamond Album for selling over 1 million copies of THE COLOUR OF MY LOVE in Canada.

1995_ Celine gets one more World MusicAward, 2 Juno Awards and D'EUX comes out, which during the summer sells more than 75000 copies a day, and in 7 months it becomes the greatest discographic French success of all time. Sony Music deals the new edition of LES PREMIERES ANNEES and two new compilations: CÉLINE DION vol.1 and CÉLINE DION vol.2. Céline gets 3 ADISQ Awards; sells really good in Japan too with THE COLOUR OF MY LOVE. At the end of the year TAPESTRY REVISITED comes out, a tribute to Carole King and to her most famous album.

1996_On January 22nd Celine is nominated Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Minister of Culture because she is "always the best ambassadress of the French language". She gets 2 MIDEM Awards, a Juno Award, a World Music Award , the VH1 Award as Artist Of The Year and a Victoires De La Musique Awards as Best French Artist and another for POUR QUE TU M'AIMES ENCORE as Song Of The Year; come out the first single from FALLING INTO YOU which is sold without advetising campaign but it climbs to the second place of the French chart: the first one is still occupied by D'EUX. BECAUSE YOU LOVED ME single stands 4 months in the Top5 and becomes the greatest success of all the times in the Grown Up/Contemporary category. Céline wins the Ireland Discographic Award. D'EUX stands at the Top for 44 weeks. Celine takes part in Good Morning America broadcast; plays some concerts in Canada and FALLING INTO YOU new single comes out. Celine records in Spanish and gets a big success in UK and Japan; sings at the Olympic Games in front of 10.000 spectators and more than 3 500 000 viewers; hands over the earnings of the ceremony to the Canadian Team; plays a tour across the States. In September begins the European tour and FALLING INTO YOU album climbs to the top of Billboard charts. In October comes out LIVE A PARIS and in Montreal Céline is declarated out of competition due to her extraordinary skill. She gets the Bambi Award from the German Burda Magazine; wins with her husband more tham 5 ADISQ Awards. Her unauthorized biography is stopped by her husband/manager. ‘Til this moment she won also 33 Felix Awards. Sony Music announce that FALLING INTO YOU sold over 18 million copies all over the world and Céline got 55 Platinum Records in Canada (every Diamond Record equals to 10 Platinum ones!!). Céline is the special guest in the 100th episode of the sit-com "The Nanny" and takes part at a private party for Donald Trump.

NUMBERS OF 1996_ In 1996 Céline played 116 concerts for 1 500 000 spectators. D'EUX stood at the Top for 44 weeks; POUR QUE TU M'AIMES ENCORE single 15 weeks; the 3 albums in the Top 20 were all a number one and D'EUX sold over 4 million copies. Celine pulverized Mariah Carey/Boyz II Men 13 weeks record with her persistence at the top for 19 weeks with BECAUSE YOU LOVED ME. The song stood 6 weeks at number one in Billboard Magazine Hot100 chart. FALLING INTO YOU reached the first place in the same magazine chart.

SPECIFICATIONS OF 1997_ Until 1997 FALLING INTO YOU had been at the top in many nations, e.g.: UK, Austria, Australia, Canada, USA, New Zealand, Swiss, Norway... In 9 months Celine sold 18 million copies of FALLING..., 2 million copies of LIVE A PARIS, 1 million copies of D'EUX, and 1 million copies of previous albums. Every week FALLING... sells 500 000 copies and in 1996 Celine sold more albums than everybody, put together in the last three years!!! At least she sold 1 million copies every month for the last 36.. Only in 1997 Celine got 17 Awards!!!

1997_ In November LET'S TALK ABOUT LOVE comes out in stores and, in 7 months only, sells more than 23 million copies all over the world, getting 15 Platinum Records in Canada, 8 in the USA, 3 in France, 6 in UK, and also in the rest of the world. In that album great names of music universe take part: Barbara Streisand, Bee Gees, Luciano Pavarotti, and Carole King duets with Céline in THE REASON produced by Sir George Martin (the producer of the Beatles!!!) With the releasing of TITANIC movie MY HEART WILL GO ON climbs every chart and stands at the top for more than 40 weeks. During March ‘98 also many dance re-mixes of MY HEART... come out in stores. In 1997 Céline wins 17 awards, and among them: 5 Felix Awards, 4 Juno Awards, 2 Grammy Awards, 3 World Music Awards in the categories Album Of The Year, Best Vocalist, Best selling Album, Best Artist... for LIVE A PARIS and FALLING INTO YOU.

1998_ On March 23rd Céline sings a breathtaking performance of MY HEART... at the Academy Awards wearing a marvellous replica of the "Heart of the Ocean". As regards Titanic (which wins 11 Oscars), MY HEART... is chosen as Best Original Song at the Oscar Gala. In April Titanic Soundtrack reaches the Diamond status in Canada.
Trumpet-blares!!! Céline is appointed to the Order of Canada. She's become an Officer on May 1st, in Ottawa. Gets this recognition for her "outstanding contribution to the world of contemporary music. Through her recordings and accomplished performances, she consistently demonstrates the high regard she has for her audiences...This great artist is an example of drive and determination for all Canadians."(Government House, press release) In April Celine is "Artist Of The Month" in VH1 Tv Programmme. From August to October plays concerts in the USA. In July MY HEART... video is nominated for two MTV Music Awards: Best Video From A Film and Viewers Choice. On September 8th, the new French album comes out in stores: it's S'IL SUFFISAIT D'AIMER, produced by Jean-Jacques Goldman. On Oct 6th, is released VH1 DIVAS LIVE where take part Céline Dion, Aretha Franklin, Shania Twain, Mariah Carey and Gloria Estefan with special guest Carole King singing together once-in-a-lifetime concert in NY, broadcast live on April 14th, 1998. On November 3rd THESE ARE SPECIAL TIMES album is released; it's an album of Xmas songs, and 2 duets with R. Kelly and Andrea Bocelli, produced by David Foster and Rick Wake. And Céline does it again: she wins a new award: Favourite Canadian Artist. Again on TV, Céline has a part in the 100th episode of the TV serial "Touched by an Angel".

1999_ After the release of the Christmas album in 1998, Céline dedicates all herself for her world's tour performing more than 100 concerts all over the world! This year she wins many awards (as usual!) in many categories: a Blockbuster Entertainment Award, 4 Grammy Awards, an International Archievement Award, 2 American Music Awards (Favourite Female Pop/Rock Artist and Favourite Adult Contemporary Artist) and a People's Choiche Award as Favourite Female Music Performer. She gets a Much Music Award nominee. Between November '98 and May '99 LIVE IN MEMPHIS video is released all around the world, while in February Céline and Andrea Bocelli sing a breath taking performance of THE PRAYER. In April -with an official release- Céline announce that René has been hospitalized in Dallas for a short time because of a squamous cell carcinoma metastatic to his neck, but he's doing well day after day.For this reason she postpones some concert dates asking her fans support and understanding, while in the fall tour she sings with Corey Hart. On June 19th and 20th Céline records her concerts at the Stade de France in Paris performing all her best French songs for a limited edition live album! This Cd -called CÉLINE AU COEUR DU STADE- is released all around the world in September, while in France, Belgium and Switzerland it's accompained by a video-concert.
In November ALL THE WAY is released all around the world: it's Céline's first English compilation. It's composed by 16 tracks, among them 9 are her best hits while 7 are brand new. The last track is LIVE, the English translation of the song VIVRE by Luc Plamondon and Richard Cocciante written for the opera NOTRE DAME DE PARIS by Plamondon-Cocciante based on the novel by Victor Hugo. The first single is THAT'S THE WAY IT IS, which archieves a huge worldwide success!
On december, 31st Céline perform a breathtaking 4-hour concert at the Molson Centre in Montreal to say "Hello" to the 2000 and say "Goodbye, See You Soon" to all her faithful fans...she will rest for a long time after 19 years career!!

2000_In January Céline is VH1 Artist Of The Month. On the 5th Jan, Céline and René renew their vows in an orthodox wedding at the Ceasar's Palace in Las Vegas in order to celebrate their 5-year life together and the end of René's illness. Towards the end of January René is taken in again in hospital for chest and neck pain, he recovers then at home.
IF WALLS COULD TALK is the second single released from the album ALL THE WAY; it goes out in the European stores on Feb, 21st.
In January the National Enquirer magazine put a false and fake article saying that Céline was pregnant. Céline and René sue the magazine for 20 million dollars!
In mid-March two more singles are released in the USA: I WANT YOU TO NEED ME and LIVE. At a golf tournament Cèline shows her new haircut and she takes the 6th place in the competition!
Trumpet Blares!!!! In June Céline discloses the world that she is finally pregnant!!! Here's an extract of her statement: "There's no hiding happiness. We can't keep something so big, so wonderful, a secret just for us. This time it's for real ­ I'm pregnant."

[ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]

[Man Hunter]

Born: 7 January 1964
Where: Long Beach, California, USA
Awards: Won 1 Oscar, 1 Golden Globe and 2 BAFTA nominations
Height: 6' 1"

Filmography: The Complete List

Considering his early roles and his initial peer group, it's hard to believe that Nicolas Cage has got this far. A peripheral member of the early Eighties' Brat Pack, he should surely have gone the way of Charlie Sheen, Emilio Estevez and, lest we forget, Andrew McCarthy. Yet somehow he has become one of the most expressive and sought-after actors of his generation, an Oscar-winner and a major box-office draw.

Born Nicholas Kim Coppola in Long Beach, California on the 7th of January, 1964, young Nic had a heavyweight name to live up to. Both his parents were successes in themselves - his father, August, was a professor in comparative literature at Cal State, Long Beach (later the Dean of Creative Arts at San Francisco State University) and his mother, Joy Vogelsang was a renowned dancer and choreographer. Yet the family contained bigger names still. Nic's aunt was Talia Shire, star of the Rocky movies and subject of Stallone's final, triumphant bellow of "Adrian! Adrian!" while his uncle was no less than Francis Ford Coppola, deified director of The Godfather and Apocalypse Now. Tough to top achievements like that.

Nic had not always aimed to be an actor, but he could always act. One early story sees him getting bullied on the school bus, having his Twinkies taken from him. Enraged, he went home, togged himself up in his brother's jeans and cowboy boots and, slicking back his hair and slipping on shades, he approached his tormentor and, claiming to be Roy Wilkinson (his own older cousin), he threatened to batter the bully if he did not leave young Nic Coppola alone. It worked
[ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]

[Man Hunter]

Angelina Jolie is the daughter of Academy Award-winning actor Jon Voight, and former actress/model Marcheline Bertrand. Jon Voight separated from Bertrand when Jolie was 1, remained in California while the family lived on the East coast. ''He was the perfect example of an artist who couldn't be married,'' she says. ''He had the perfect family, but there's something for him that's very scary about that.'' Jolie, is her middle name. Ultimately, she decided to use it because, she says, ''I love my father, but I'm not him''.

Angelina began training and performing at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute at around 12. She was seen in several stage productions at the Institute. She worked as a professional model in London, New York and Los Angeles, and has also appeared in music videos for such artists as the Rolling Stones, Meat Loaf, Lenny Kravitz, Antonello Venditti and The Lemonheads. In addition, she has acted in five student films for the USC School of Cinema, all directed by her brother, James Haven. She landed her first feature film starring part in HACKERS, about a group of high school computer hackers. Previously, she had roles in independent features Gathering Evidence and Oh No, Not Her.Angelina was married to her co-star from Hackers, Jonny Lee Miller. The marriage took place in May of 1996 where she wore black rubber clothes (although they are now divorced). She has a extensive dagger collection (likes knives) and has several tattoos (one is the Japanese word for death on her shoulder). Today Angelina splits her time between New York and Los Angeles.


Name : Angelina Jolie

Full Name : Angelina Jolie Voight

Date Of Birth : 4 June 1975

Place Of Birth : Los Angeles, California

Sign : Gemini

Height : 5'7

Hair : Brown

Eyes : Blue

Father : Jon Voight

Mother : Marcheline Bertrand

Brother : James Haven Voight

Spouse : Billy Bob Thornton (May 2000-present)(actor, director, writer)
Jonny Lee Miller (1996-1999)(actor)

Profession : Actress

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[Man Hunter]

Jennifer Aniston was born on February 11, 1969 in Sherman Oaks, California to Nancy and John Aniston (Victor Kiriakis on Days of Our Lives).Aniston, who is Greek, spent a year of her childhood living in Greece with her family but later, moved to New York when her father landed a role on the daytime drama, Love of Life.Aniston's parents separated when she was 9 years old. After the divorce, she was raised in New York City by her mother.Aniston was inspired to act after seeing the play Children of A Lesser God on Broadway. At 11, Aniston joined the Rudolf Steiner School's drama club. Aniston was, and still is, a very talented artist and at the young age of 11, one her paintings was displayed at an exhibit at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.At 15, Aniston was accepted to New York's High School For The Performing Arts. In 1987, after graduating from high school, Aniston spent a year living at home with her mom. She did not want to go to college. Instead, she worked at a burger joint called Jackson Hole in Manhattan. During those burger-pushing days, Aniston won roles in the Off-Broadway productions of For Dear Life at New York's Public Theater and Dancing On Checkers Grave.

Looking for more of a challenge, Aniston moved west where she met soon-to-be friend, Matthew Perry (Chandler Bing).During 1989, Aniston was cast in a handful of television shows. In 1993, Aniston won a part in Leprechaun. In those years, Aniston made a name for herself as an actress who would take risks and graciously accept criticism of herself and her work.Then, a pilot of a show called Friends Like Us came along. Aniston was originally tested for the role of Monica, but she told the producers that she felt much more comfortable with the Rachel character and they agreed.Life wasn't all easy for Aniston though. Before getting the role of Rachel Green on Friends, Aniston was told to lose some weight and she did. She lost 30 pounds. Now, as the girl everyone wants to look like, fame has proven to be a bit daunting for Aniston. Now, her passions for things like antiquing, hiking, and travelling have been halted, for the time being. She can no longer go out into public without being stopped for autograph requests or photos and finds the worst part of her newfound celebrity status is meeting a man. However, that doesn't seem to be a problem anymore because Jennifer Aniston is currently going out with actor, Tate Donovan

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[Man Hunter]

Steve McQueen has been described as an angry young man, Mr. Cool, a bit mysterious, and sometimes having a mean streak. But all of his fans know there was only one Steve McQueen. Born on March 24, 1930 in Beech Grove, Indiana. This small town boy with poor education never knew his father.


McQueen's father left when he was only six months old. Later, while still a young boy, his mother left him so he had to move in with his uncle on a farm in Missouri. He lived here until he was twelve years old when he left Missouri to move in with his mother in Los Angeles.



Here he started hanging out with gangs and got into some trouble. His mother sent him to the Boys Republic, a home for boys in California. McQueen tried to run away but was caught. Later he gave credit to the Boys Republic for getting his life in order.


He didn't forget how the school had helped him and after becoming a famous movie star he still visited the school often. In 1962 he set up a four-year scholarship for the best student. In his will he left $200,000 to the school. A building was dedicated in his honor and named the Steve McQueen Recreation Center.


After leaving the Boys Republic, McQueen joined the Marines. When he got out he went to New York and worked on a ship. Later he moved on to Texas and worked in oil fields. Having tumbleweed fever he moved on again to Canada and worked as a lumberjack. He went back to New York and worked at odd jobs and took up with an actress who encouraged him to go for an acting career.


He got accepted in the New York acting school. He attended school in the day and worked at night driving a truck. Later he landed a scholarship at Herbert-Bergoff Drama School. Soon he was on Broadway and it was here he met Neile Adams. They fell in love, got married and moved to California. They had two children together, Chad and Terry.


In California, he got parts in low budget films and soon landed the main character in a TV series called, Wanted: Dead or Alive. From there he was on his way to stardom. He was known to hang out at the Whiskey a-go-go and fashioned himself in a lifestyle of drugs and women.


McQueen is known as the highest paid movie star of the sixties and seventies. He is also known as one of the best actors in film history and his films are considered classics. Some of his greatest films are The Great Escape, The Sand Pebbles (Academy award nomination), Bullitt (exciting car chase), The Getaway, Papillon, and many others.


During the making of the film, Lemans, McQueen was under a great deal of stress afraid it wouldn't be a success. This film was important to him because he loved car racing. It didn't go over the way he had planned. The film went over budget and was taken away from McQueen. He was crushed.


While filming The Getaway he fell in love with his co-star, Ali MacGraw. McQueen and his wife of 15 years split and he and MacGraw married. He began making commercials for Honda. Now, he dabbled deeper into the world of drugs, friends say often doing cocaine.


His hair grew long, his beard unkempt and he looked more like a wildman than Steve McQueen. Some say he was known to have women in his trailer while making films, and that he was traveling on a dark path. Soon he and Ali were divorced.


Later on he mellowed out and decided to become a pilot like his father. He met a model named Barbara Minty and they married. Then, he found out he had lung cancer, and with only two months to live he and his wife went to Mexico for treatment.


Here at a Mexican clinic, he underwent an agonizing three-month regimen of animal cell injections, and was taking over 100 vitamins a day. Still, his body continued to weaken. He had surgery to remove an abdominal tumor and soon after that is was all over for the celebrated actor who had been known as "Mr.Cool."


McQueen died on November 7, 1980 at age 50. An open Bible lay across his chest and Steve McQueen lay in death with a smile on his face. His daughter, Terry McQueen died March 19, 1998 at age 38 after complications from a liver transplant. As time goes by, Steve McQueen gathers more fans in death than he did in life.


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[Man Hunter]

Hey Guys;This Is One of our heros,Professor Hessabi.enjoy and proud.

The world is constantly changing, moving forward and making progress. This evolutionary process would be possible only when people with great minds discover new things and initiate new solutions to the existing problems of the world. The ceaseless endeavor, of these people lead to new inventions and discoveries.


The world is indeed indebted to the works of many learned people who eagerly spend much of their lives to discover the hidden forces of the world and create new theories. These people are indeed the engine of the world’s movement and dynamism. In all ages such people lived and contributed to the well being of mankind. In the past many well-known learned scientists mastered various subjects such as mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, medicine and etc., mainly due to the limited scope of these fields at that time. But as the time passed and man’s knowledge in each field grew, the scientists’ field of specialization became more focused. However, there remained a few scientists whose curiosity and talent led them to master several fields of knowledge and they were able to meaningfully contribute to the world in many different areas. Professor Hessaby was one of these scientists who was able to master several fields of science. Therefore he can be considered a great person with great ideas and a great mind.

Professor Mahmoud Hessaby was born in 1903 in Tafresh, Iran, he lived 89 years and died in 1992. During his life he lived, studied and worked in different countries. In his early years of life he went to Lebanon, where he completed secondary school and studied Civil Engineering, Mathematics, History, Literature, Biology and Astronomy. He then went to Paris and studied Electrical and Mining Engineering and received degrees for them. Then he finally turned to physics and at the age of 25 he received his Ph.D. in this field. He once said that "I went first into medicine, then into Engineering and then I decided that it was physics, which could keep me busy and captivate me" (qtd. in "A Brief Biography of Professor Mahmud Hessaby" 16). He then went to Princeton, U.S.A. to work on his theory. After the completion of his work he went back to Iran, and greatly contributed to the development and modernization of his country.

One of the reasons that Professor Hessaby can be considered a great mind is his endless desire for knowledge that led him to study and master several fields of science. Dr. HadadAdel, one of the Iranian philosophers, said that, "Professor Hessaby was not only knowledgeable and a learned scientist but also he was very humble and was known for his sincere behavior " ("Dr. Hessaby, a man with lots of abilities" 29). He studied and researched in different subjects and was able to make great contributions in most of them. Such achievements are the result of deep curiosity and strong talent and intelligence that could not be found in ordinary people. He also taught different subjects at various universities and gave new and interesting ideas in each of them.

The other aspect that makes him a great mind is his well-known theory of "Infinitely extended particles". After Professor Hessaby obtained his Ph.D. in Physics he continued his research in U.S.A. That was when Professor Hessaby met with Professor Albert Einstein. Professor Hessaby was the only Iranian who closely worked with Professor Einstein. Professor Hessaby’s theories and his views were different from those of Professor Einstein’s, but he still continued to work closely with Professor Einstein. He worked on his theory in Princeton, Chicago and preformed many different experiments to verify his theory. He published the results of his research in 1946 at Princeton University. His theory "Infinitely extended particles" is well known among scientists and made him a senior member of the New York academy of science. Professor Einstein once said about him that "One day he will change the direction of physics in the world."("Dr Hessaby, infinitely extended particles" 7). In 1973 the medal of "Commandeur de la Legion", France’s greatest scientific medal was awarded to him for his great theory.

The other point that makes Professor Hessaby a great mind, is his loyalty and great services to his country. Dr. Hadad Adel said that, "Professor Hessaby did not use science as a mean to earn money, but to serve humanity" ("Dr. Hessaby, a man with lots of abilities" 31). He taught seven generations of Iranian students. He is one of the very few who transferred modern science and technology from all over the world to Iran. He also played a significant role in the establishment of Universities and scientific centers in Iran. Professor Hessaby established the first University in Iran called Tehran U. Due to his invaluable services, in 1990 he was given the title of "The Father of Physics" and he was a pioneer of modern science in Iran.

Every five years The American Biographical Institute (ABI) and The International Biographical Center (IBC) select a list of five thousand scientists from all over the world. Among these scientists only one person is chosen as the "World Man of the Year in Science". In 1990 these two institutes gave this title to Professor Mahmoud Hessaby.

In conclusion Professor Hessaby was a great person both in the history of the science and for the modernization of his country. He had an endless quest for knowledge and succeeded in developing valuable theories, such as the "infinitely extended particles". One of the great things he did was the modification of Newton’s law of gravity and Columbus’ law. Professor Hessaby knew eleven different languages, such as Persian, English, French, Arabic, German, Italian, Greek and etc. What makes professor Hessaby unique is the numerous services he rendered for his country, such as Establishment of Tehran U., the teachers collage the first meteorological station and radiological center in Iran. He also founded the space research center, the geophysics institute and the satellite tracking observatory center of Iran. It is interesting to know that professor Hessaby also mastered Persian literature, played piano and violin and established the first Iranian institute of music. Professor Hessaby’s life, his struggles, his tireless and intense interest in the quest of science as well as his deep interest in teaching the youth, and his commitment to the scientific progress of his country provides a living example and model for the students of science.

[Man Hunter]

In the history of Persia different dynasties rivalled for supreme power, killing off their opponents. After the violent deaths of his father and elder brother, 12-year-old Ismail assembled an army, defeated the Khan of the Aq Qoyunlu and became Shah Ismail I of Persia (1487-1524). Near the end of his life Ismail I became a melancholic alcoholic and lost interest in affairs of state. His son, Tamasp I (1513-1576), is described as "a mean, treacherous and melancholy man". Gradually, he turned into a recluse and no longer left his palace. His son, Ismail II (1533-1577), had been imprisoned for the last twenty years of his father's reign. This Shah mercilessly killed off possible rivals to the throne, including many of his own brothers, until he died of an opium overdose. Shah Safi II (±1647-1694), a drunkard and recluse, was said to have shut himself up for seven years in the harem without emerging once. Shah Husayn (±1668-1726) was known for his uxoriousness and married many wives before he was deposed, imprisoned and beheaded.

Nadir (1688-1747) was the son of a poor peasant, who lived in Khurasan and died while Nadir was still a child. Nadir and his mother were carried off as slaves by the Özbegs, but Nadir managed to escape and became a soldier. Soon he attracted the attention of a chieftain of the Afshar1, in whose service Nadir rapidly advanced. Eventually, the ambitious Nadir fell out of favour. He became a rebel and gathered a substantial army.

In 1719 the Afghans had invaded Persia. They deposed the reigning Shah of the Safavid dynasty in 1722. Their ruler, Mahmud Ghilzai (±1699-1725), murdered a large number of Safavid Princes, hacking many of them to death by his own hand. After he had invited the leading citizens of Isfahan to a feast and massacred them there, his own supporters assassinated Mahmud in 1725. His cousin, Ashraf (±1700-1730), took over and married a Safavid princess.

At first, Nadir fought with the Afghans against the Özbegs until they withheld him further payment. In 1727 Nadir offered his services to Tamasp II (±1704-1740), heir to the Safavid dynasty. Nadir started the reconquest of Persia and drove the Afghans out of Khurasan. The Afghans suffered heavy losses, but before they fled Ashraf massacred an additional 3000 citizens of Isfahan. Most of the fleeing Afghans were soon overtaken and killed by Nadir's men, while others died in the desert. Ashraf himself was hunted down and murdered.

By 1729 Nadir had freed Persia from the Afghans. Tamasp II was crowned Shah, although he was little more than a figurehead. While Nadir was putting down a revolt in Khurasan, Tamasp moved against the Turks, losing Georgia and Armenia. Enraged, Nadir deposed Tamasp in 1732 and installed Tamasp's infant son, Abbas III (1732-1740), on the throne, naming himself regent. Within two years Nadir recaptured the lost territory and extended the Empire at the expense of the Turks and the Russians.

In 1736 Nadir evidently felt that his own position had been established so firmly that he no longer needed to hide behind a nominal Safavid Shah and ascended the throne himself. In 1738 he invaded Qandahar, captured Kabul and marched on to India. He seized and sacked Delhi and, after some disturbances, he killed 30000 of its citizens. He plundered the Indian treasures of the Mughal Emperors, taking with him the famous jewel-encrusted Peacock Throne and the Koh-i Noor diamond2. In 1740 Nadir had Tamasp II and his two infant sons put to death. Then he invaded Transoxania. He resumed war with Turkey in 1743. In addition, he built a navy and conquered Oman.

Gradually Nadir's greedy and intolerant nature became more pronounced. The financial burden of his standing armies was more than the Persians could bear and Nadir imposed the death penalty on those who failed to pay his taxes. He stored most of his loot for his own use and showed little if any concern for the general welfare of the country. Nadir concentrated all power in his own hands. He was a brilliant soldier and the founder of the Persian navy, but he was entirely lacking any interest in art and literature. Once, when Nadir was told that there was no war in paradise, he was reported to have asked: "How can there be any delights there?". He moved the capital to Mashhad in Khurasan, close to his favourite mountain fortress. He tried to reconcile Sunnism with Shi'itism, because he needed people of both faiths in his army, but the reconciliation failed.

In the evening Nadir would retire to his private apartment, where he usually supped with three or four favourites. He drank wine with moderation, but was very fond of women. In his later days he had 33 women in his harem. Nadir preferred to speak in Turki (Eastern Turkish), but he could converse in Persian, too. His contemporaries mentioned his remarkably loud voice, which enabled him to make his commands easily heard. From 1739 onwards Nadir used to dye his beard and moustache black, thus keeping a youthful appearance. Duting the 1740s he lost several of his front teeth.

In his later years, revolts began to break out against Nadir's oppressive rule and his increasing lust for blood and money. He suffered from dropsy, and as a result he was troubled at times by severe melancholia and outbursts of rage. In 1743 Nadir was treated for a liver complaint. In the summer of 1745 he was seriously ill and had to be carried in a litter. He suffered from constipation and had frequent attacks of vomiting.

Following an assination attempt, Nadir began exhibited signs of mental derangement. He suspected his own son, Reza Quli Mirza (1719-1747), of plotting against him and had him blinded. Soon he started executing the nobles who had witnessed his son's blinding. Gradually Nadir's attacks of frenzy became periods of actual insanity which recurred with increasing frequency. In January 1747 he left Isfahan for Kirman. Wherever he halted, Nadir had many people tortured and put to death. He had towers of their heads erected. In March he crossed the terrible Dasht-i-Lut desert, where many of his men perished of hunger and thirst. By then, even his own tribesmen felt that he was too dangerous a man to be near. A group of Afshar and Qajar chiefs decided "to breakfast off him ere he should sup off them". His own commanders surprised him in his sleep, but Nadir managed to kill two of them before the assassins cut off his head.

Nadir was Persia's most gifted military genius and is known as "The Second Alexander" and "The Napoleon of Persia". He raised his country from the lowest depths of degradation to the proud position of the foremost military power in Asia. Unfortunately, his triumphs were at the expense of incalculable suffering and terrible loss of life. His grandiosity, his insatiable desire for more conquests and his egocentric behaviour suggest a narcissistic personality disorder and in his last years he seems to have developed some paranoid tendencies. Nadir was married four times and had 5 sons and 15 grandsons. Their deaths were ordered by Nadir's successor.

Copyright © 1997, 2000, 2002 by J.N.W. Bos. All rights reserved.

[Man Hunter]

Biography of Bruce Lee
Bruce Lee (Lee Hsiao Lung), was born in San Fransisco in November 1940 the son of a famous Chinese opera singer. Bruce moved to Hong Kong when he soon became a child star in the growing Eastern film industry. His first film was called The birth of Mankind, his last film which was uncompleted at the time of his death in 1973 was called Game of Death. Bruce was a loner and was constantly getting himself into fights, with this in mind he looked towards Kung Fu as a way of disciplining himself. The famous Yip Men taught Bruce his basic skills, but it was not long before he was mastering the master. Yip Men was acknowledged to be one of the greatest authorities on the subject of Wing Chun a branch of the Chinese Martial Arts. Bruce mastered this before progressing to his own style of Jeet Kune Do.

At the age of 19 Bruce left Hong Kong to study for a degree in philosophy at the University of Washington in America. It was at this time that he took on a waiter's job and also began to teach some of his skills to students who would pay. Some of the Japanese schools in the Seattle area tried to force Bruce out, and there was many confrontations and duels fought for Bruce to remain.

He met his wife Linda at the University he was studying. His Martial Arts school flourished and he soon graduated. He gained some small roles in Hollywood films - Marlowe- etc, and some major stars were begging to be students of the Little Dragon. James Coburn, Steve McQueen and Lee Marvin to name but a few. He regularly gave displays at exhibitions, and it was during one of these exhibitions that he was spotted by a producer and signed up to do The Green Hornet series. The series was quite successful in the States - but was a huge hit in Hong Kong. Bruce visited Hong Kong in 1968 and he was overwhelmed by the attention he received from the people he had left.

He once said on a radio program if the price was right he would do a movie for the Chinese audiences. He returned to the States and completed some episodes of Longstreet. He began writing his book on Jeet Kune Do at roughly the same time.

Back in Hong Kong producers were desperate to sign Bruce for a Martial Arts film, and it was Raymond Chow the head of Golden Harvest who produced The Big Boss. The rest as they say is history.

Read the chronological time life of Bruce Lee.

[Man Hunter]

Born: 28 April 1937
Birthplace: Tikrit District, Iraq
Best Known As: Leader of Iraq, 1979-2003
Saddam Hussein was dictator of Iraq from 1979 until 2003, when his regime was overthrown by a United States-led invasion. Hussein had joined the revolutionary Baath party while he was a university student. He launched his political career in 1958 by assassinating a supporter of Iraqi ruler Abdul-Karim Qassim. Saddam rose in the ranks after a Baath coup, and by 1979 he was Iraq's president and de facto dictator. He led Iraq through a decade-long war with Iran, and in August of 1990 his forces invaded the neighboring country of Kuwait. A U.S.-led alliance organized by George Bush (the elder) ran Hussein's forces out of Kuwait in the Gulf War, which ended in February of 1991 with Saddam still in power. In 2002 Hussein came under renewed pressure from George W. Bush, the son of the first President Bush. In March of 2003, Hussein's regime was overthrown by an invasion of U.S. and British forces. Hussein disappeared, but U.S. forces captured him on 13 December 2003 after finding him hiding in a small underground pit on a farm near the town of Tikrit. Late in 2005 he went on trial in Iraq for the 1982 deaths of over 140 men in the town of Dujail, though at this writing the main portion of the trial is not expected to occur until 2006.

Before the 1991 Gulf War, Hussein threatened that if international forces led by the United States attacked Iraq, it would be "the mother of all wars," giving rise to a multi-purpose catchphrase: "the mother of all (fill in the blank)"... The U.S. effort in the Gulf War was directed by the elder George Bush and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colin Powell; Powell later became Secretary of State under Bush's son George W. Bush... Hussein's sons Uday and Qusay were killed by U.S forces in the northern town of Mosul in July of 2003... Saddam Hussein is no relation to King Hussein, the late ruler of Jordan

[Man Hunter]

Born: 31 May 1930
Where: San Francisco, California, USA
Awards: Won 4 Oscars and 5 Golden Globes
Height: 6' 4"

Filmography: The Complete List

He is, of course, best known as The Man With No Name. With that menacing squint, the cigar-stub clenched between his teeth, the Stetson pulled low, ever ready to flip back that dirty poncho and reveal that well-oiled six-shooter. Woe betide you if you ever insulted his mule. Everyone, but everyone knows Clint Eastwood from Sergio Leone's Dollar trilogy. That was how he came to fame, wasn't it? Those were the films that led him to become the cynical deputy sheriff of Coogan's Bluff, the mystic revengers of High Plains Drifter and Pale Rider, the last of the rebel hold-outs in The Outlaw Josey Wales, and the aged gunslinger dragged back to violence in the Oscar-winning Unforgiven.

But, though he achieved his box-office breakthrough with those legendary mid-Sixties spaghetti westerns, and over the next 3 decades produced some of the greatest cowboy movies ever made, Eastwood has also scored major financial and artistic successes far beyond the dusty genre that spawned him. Where, say, Sylvester Stallone found trouble when he stepped away from Rocky or Rambo, Eastwood remained convincing when not portraying his cold frontiersman or his other major character, the perp-hating, authority-baiting "Dirty" Harry Callahan. Think of his manipulative Confederate seducer in The Beguiled: his orang-utan-loving bare-knuckle fighter in Every Which Way But Loose: his drunken cop, doomed by his incompetence in The Gauntlet: his dying singer, battling his way to the Grand Ole Oprey in Honkytonk Man: his haunted agent, desperate to save the President in In The Line Of Fire: his ageing photographer, suffering unrequited love in The Bridges Of Madison County. No sign of the silent killer there, but great films, all of them, along with so many more. It is to the Academy's undying shame that Eastwood was not nominated in any category till he was gone 60.

Repeated Post, buddy! Take a look at the first post! But thank you anyway for your attention to this topic and specially your interest in my favorite actor :happy: ;)

Reza1969

[Man Hunter]

Born: 17 January 1962
Where: Newmarket, Ontario, Canada
Awards: Won 2 Golden Globes, nominated for 1 BAFTA
Height: 6' 2"

Arguments may occasionally rage over the acting abilities of Keanu Reeves and Brad Pitt, but no one, absolutely NO ONE divides opinion like Jim Carrey. With his elastic features, frantic mugging and screen-hogging antics, many believe him to be an intolerably childish clown, even more irritating than his brother in buffoonery Pee Wee Herman. Others though (and they can be counted in the multi-millions) see Carrey as continuing a long line of classic comedians stretching back through Jerry Lewis and Laurel and Hardy. They laud him as a comic machine-gun, only ever stalling his barrage for long enough to reload, then unleashing another hail of laughs. What's for sure is that no other comic actor, not even Robin Williams, can equal his manic intensity, and very few actors of any kind can match his extraordinary run of hits.

He was born James Eugene Carrey on the 17th of January, 1962, in Newmarket, Ontario (it's worth noting that both of America's biggest comic film stars - Carrey and Mike Myers - are Canadian). Newmarket was a neat and easy-going town just to the north of Toronto, and it was here that Carrey spent his early years with his three older siblings - Pat, John and Rita - and parents Percy and Kathleen. Kathleen suffered depression and was often chronically sick with illnesses both real and imagined. Percy, sharp-witted and highly amusing, was formerly a sax player in a big band, but had sold his sax and his dreams to take a job as an accountant. His wife's father habitually referred to him as "Loser", easily done as Percy was extremely mild-mannered. Indeed, Jim would later model The Mask's Stanley Ipkiss on him.

[sise]

Biography for
Tom Cruise

Birth name
Thomas Cruise Mapother IV
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Height
5' 7" (1.70 m)
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Mini biography
In 1976, if you had told 14 year old Franciscan seminary student Thomas Cruise Mapother IV that one day in the not too distant future he would be considered one of the top 100 movie stars of all time, he would have probably grinned and told you that his ambition was to become a priest. Nonetheless, this sensitive, deeply religious youngster who was born in 1962 in Syracuse, New York, was destined to become Tom Cruise, one of the highest paid and most sought after actors in screen history. The only son (among four children) of nomadic parents young Tom spent his boyhood eternally on the move and by the time he was 14 he had attended 15 different schools in the US and Canada. He finally settled in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, with his mother and her new husband. While in high school, he developed an interest in acting and abandoned his plans of becoming a priest, dropped out of school, and at age 18 headed for New York and a possible acting career. The next 15 years of his life are the stuff of legends. He made his film debut with a small part in Endless Love (1981) and from the outset exhibited an undeniable box office appeal to both male and female audiences.

Though below average height and not particularly handsome in the traditional sense, within 5 years Tom Cruise was starring in some of the top grossing films of the 1980s including Top Gun (1986); The Color of Money (1986), Rain Man (1988) and Born on the Fourth of July (1989). By the 1990s he was one of the highest paid actors in the world earning an average 15 million dollars a picture in such blockbuster hits as Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles (1994), Mission: Impossible (1996) and Jerry Maguire (1996) - for which he received an Academy Award Nomination for best actor. In 1990 he renounced his devout Catholic beliefs and embraced The Church Of Scientology claiming that Scientology teachings had cured him of the dyslexia that had plagued him all of his life. A kind and thoughful man well known for his compassion and generosity, Tom Cruise is one of the best liked members of the movie community. He was married to actress Nicole Kidman until 2001. Thomas Cruise Mapother IV has indeed come a long way from the lonely wanderings of his youth

[Asalbanoo]

Born: 19
March 1955
Where: Idar-Oberstein, Germany
Awards: Won 1 Golden Globe
Height: 6'

In 2001, he swore blind that he'd never again appear in an all-action, explosions-a-go-go blockbuster, but Bruce Willis had a hard time escaping his reputation as that genre's most successful star. Indeed, since his first major cinematic hit, Die Hard, many of us cannot witness a fiery onscreen detonation without imagining Bruce - wide-eyed and panting in a grubby white vest - flying through the air, arms and legs flailing frantically. He's just too damn good at it. But, of course - being both a singing star, a restaurateur and an arch comedian - there's been far more to his career than that.

Bruce Willis was born Walter Bruce Willison on the 19th of March, 1955 in Idar-Oberstein, a German town near the border with Luxembourg. His dad, David, being a military man, was stationed there and his wife, Marlene, was from Kassel (they'd be divorced in 1971). On his discharge in 1957, David took his family back to Carney's Point, New Jersey, finding employment as a welder and a factory worker. Bruce, the oldest of four children (he has a sister, Flo, and two brothers, one of whom, David, is a movie producer), attended high school at Penn's Grove. A popular fellow, he was elected Student Council President and, strangely for a boy of such resolute blue-collar pride, threw himself into drama classes. This was perhaps because, tormented by a debilitating stutter, he discovered that he lost his impediment when onstage. He was also a talented wrestler - that scar on his shoulder now is actually the result of a serious sprain. Though a good student, he was suspended for three months in his senior year for taking part in what he later described as "the annual riot".

Upon leaving school, Bruce (nicknamed Bruno) was expected to attend college but, keen to live as a normal working-man, he instead took a job transporting work crews at the Du Pont factory in nearby Deepwaters. This continued until a fellow driver was killed on the job, and Bruce quit, later becoming a security guard at a nuclear plant under construction. Already keen on music, and kicking back in general, he hung out in bars and played harmonica in R&B band Loose Goose. Yet, despite his desire to be "regular", he discovered that he missed acting and enrolled at Montclair State College, where he leapt enthusiastically back into drama classes, causing something of a stir with his performance in Cat On A Hot Tin Roof. Eager to forge a career, he'd skip classes to attend auditions in New York City - eventually dropping out altogether and taking an apartment in Hell's Kitchen, much closer to the action. He would for some months share his lowly abode with another aspiring actor, Linda Fiorentino.

Still working to pay the bills, Bruce got himself a job tending bar at Café Central, a trendy media hang-out, and sought parts in plays, shows and ads. He made his off-Broadway debut in 1977 in Heaven And Earth and nabbed uncredited roles in The First Deadly Sin (where he also stood in for the killer in long-shots) and Sidney Lumet's excellent Prince Of The City and Paul Newman-starring The Verdict. Then it all began to happen. He was a hit onstage in Sam Shepard's Fool For Love and scored a sweet role as wife-beating gun-runner Tony Amato in the massive hit show Miami Vice. He also appeared in Hart To Hart and, dead cool in his natty shades, in the first TV ad for Levi 501 Blues plus, along with the then-unknown Sharon Stone, another ad for a Seagrams Wine Cooler.

But this was just a taster. Now real stardom arrived, though not in the way he expected. Flying off to LA, he auditioned for a part in Madonna's Desperately Seeking Susan, but was rejected. Being as he was in town, he checked out the other auditions taking place - one of which was for a new ABC show to be named Moonlighting. Willis found himself up against 3000 other hopefuls in the race to star alongside Cybill Shepherd as the smooth, wisecracking David Addison. And, being as that was him to a tee, he won over the producer, who cast him despite protests from ABC - the company preferring a name actor in the role.

Screened from 1985 to 1989, the show was an enormous success, with private eyes Addison and Shepherd's Maddie Hayes flirting, fighting and solving improbably complex crimes with great aplomb. On-set, the stars' relationship was far more fraught, their in-fighting becoming legendary and Willis picking up an unwanted reputation for "being difficult". But Bruce, ever ambitious despite his easy-going persona, was looking beyond the world of TV. He used his breaks from Moonlighting to star in two movies by Blake Edwards (famed Pink Panther director). First was Blind Date, with Kim Basinger, an excellent slapstick caper that was outrageously panned. Then came Sunset, the tale of two ageing cowboys solving a crime in Hollywood, where Willis played Tom Mix to James Garner's Wyatt Earp - it was another relative flop.

1987 saw everything turn around. For a start, Bruce met his future wife, Demi Moore, at the premiere of Stakeout, a cop comedy starring her then-boyfriend Emilio Estevez. He also became an international singing star, getting his funk out and crashing the charts with the hit LP, The Return Of Bruno, a collection of Motown-type material, including a cover of Respect Yourself. This would be followed by a second LP, If It Don't Kill You, It Just Makes You Stronger. The Bruno connection was continued with the comedy rockumentary, also titled Return Of Bruno, where Willis played the supposedly super-influential Bruno Radolini, paid onscreen homage by the likes of Elton John, Phil Collins and Gene Simmons.

Winning an Emmy and a Golden Globe for Moonlighting, it couldn't get much better for Bruce. Then it did. Directed by John McTiernan and filmed by Jan De Bont (who went on to direct Speed and Twister), Die Hard was a word-of-mouth smash that took everyone by surprise. As Detective John McClane, thwarting Alan Rickman in his villainous attempt to hijack a skyscraper, Willis redefined the role of the action hero. A slightly shabby smartarse, struggling in life and love, he was panicked, vulnerable and constantly on the edge of failure - yet somehow won through against impossible odds. Willis then hit big again, this time providing wise-ass put-downs for a new-born babe, in Look Who's Talking.

Now began a difficult period in Willis's career. Never content to sit comfortably in a single genre, he now played a traumatised Vietnam vet in Norman Jewison's In Country, and appeared in another mockumentary, this time the movie industry-based That's Adequate. More hits followed with the sequels to Die Hard and Look Who's Talking, but suddenly Willis's career became a rollercoaster of the genuinely sickening variety. Starring alongside Tom Hanks in Brian De Palma's adaptation of Tom Wolfe's Bonfire Of The Vanities, he was involved in one of the most expensive and critically reviled disasters in film history. Quickly he redeemed himself with Tony Scott's superior action flick The Last Boy Scout, but then it got even worse with Hudson Hawk. Based on a story by Willis himself (he also wrote the title song), it concerned a super-burglar taking on his last big job - "big job" being an apt description of the whole movie, according to crits and public alike. It went down like the proverbial lead zeppelin.

With all the stories of financial catastrophe flying around, it was understandable that most people missed out on the fact that the early Nineties also saw Willis deliver two of his finest performances. Alongside wife Demi in Alan Rudolph's excellent Mortal Thoughts, he was fantastic, and wholly out-of-character, as a mean-spirited bully. Then there was Billy Bathgate, a dodgy Mob movie starring Dustin Hoffman, wherein Willis shone as a slick rival gangster eventually consigned to the bottom of the river, concrete Hush Puppies and all.

No one seemed to notice. Bruce struggled on through the Meryl Streep comedy Death Becomes Her, the enjoyable but mostly ignored Striking Distance, a bit part in The Player, and an uncredited role in Loaded Weapon, but his career seemed to be fast spiralling downwards. Until the intervention of someone who most definitely had seen both Mortal Thoughts and Billy Bathgate - videohound Quentin Tarantino. Willis thought his part in Pulp Fiction would be tiny but it grew to spread throughout the movie. As boxer Butch Coolidge, he charmingly comforted lover Maria de Medeiros, heroically saved Ving Rhames from the Gimp and his rapist buddies, blew John Travolta to smithereens AND got away scot-free. It was a superb performance - Bruce was BACK.

And, being Bruce, he refused to make it easy on himself. He played a man in a pink bunny-suit in Rob Reiner's North, appeared alongside Newman again in the low-key Nobody's Fool, and went all arty in Four Rooms. He played a possibly lunatic time-traveller in Terry Gilliam's tremendous 12 Monkeys, and hit pay-dirt once more in Die Hard III. He seemed to have hit a plateau where he could do much as he liked, keeping his profile high with the occasional blockbuster and his involvement, along with Schwarzenegger and Stallone in the Planet Hollywood restaurant chain.

Then the wheels came off again, slowly this time. Walter Hill's Last Man Standing was a superior update of Kurosawa's Yojimbo with Willis suitably shady in the lead role, but it made no money. Next came a series of mediocre action flicks in The Jackal, The Siege and Mercury Rising, and the superficial, Gaultier-spoiled sci-fi oddity The Fifth Element. Willis's standing as a Hollywood big cheese and a guarantee of vast financial returns was in terrible danger. When Disney pulled the plug on his next project, Broadway Brawler, word was that Willis was finished. In fact, the only good press he got was for taking his clothes off on the David Letterman Show in order to publicise his wife's miserable Striptease.

Amazingly, this latest disaster proved to be the launch-pad to Bruce's greatest success yet. Stripped of his Broadway Brawler responsibilities, he took the lead in space-pic Armageddon, leading a motley band charged with saving us all from an onrushing meteor. It was a $200 million hit. It seemed the guy was charmed. Now taking the lead in a film that ought to have been a mere cult oddity carried by his name alone, Willis took a $20 million fee AND a hefty percentage. And, as supernatural thriller The Sixth Sense out-did even Armageddon, he found himself raking in upwards of $100 million, smashing Tom Hanks record for Forrest Gump.

It just got better and better. Having starred alongside Matthew Perry in The Whole Nine Yards, as a favour to his newfound buddy he appeared in Friends as Paul Stevens, the disapproving father of Ross Geller's (too-) young girlfriend. Handing his fee over to various charities, he walked off with another Emmy. Then came another massive screen hit, Unbreakable, once more with Sixth Sense director M. Night Shalamayan. Now Willis was bigger than ever, even becoming the first star to lend his face and body-movements to a videogame star, appearing as Trey Kincaide in the hit Apocalypse.

It wasn't all good news. With Demi Moore, Willis had had three daughters - Rumer, Scout Larue and Tallulah Belle - but his 12 year marriage, deemed by many to be the strongest in Tinseltown, ended in 2000 (Bruce would subsequently buy a house five miles north of the family home in Hailey, Idaho). He also lost his position as Seagrams spokesman after being caught for drunk driving. And then there was Planet Hollywood, which filed for bankrupcy reorganisation, closed numerous branches and submitted to a major restructuring. Stepping back into music, Bruce toured Europe in order to revive interest in the burger chain. Re-bitten by the boogie bug, he'd turn down a part in Ocean's Eleven in order to concentrate on a new LP, his part being taken by Andy Garcia. He'd also help set up a new label, the Uptop Music Corporation, dedicated to releasing acts by marginalised artists like Aaron Neville's son Ivan.

Attempting to spread his wings a little, Bruce followed Unbreakable with a string of more testing projects. First he returned to comedy, alongside Billy Bob Thornton and Cate Blanchett in the heist romp Bandits. Then came Hart's War, the first of consecutive big screen military dramas. Here Colin Farrell was assigned to defend a black officer accused of murdering a white racist in a POW camp during WW2. As senior officer Colonel William McNamara, Willis appears offensively uninterested - but then perhaps he has something equally heroic on the go.

After appearing in a filmed stage version of Sam Shepard's True West (writer of Bruce's stage breakthrough), recorded at the Liberty Theatre in Hailey, Idaho, where he was a small-time crook trying to ingratiate his way into the film business, came another war drama, Tears Of The Sun. Here he led a troop of Navy SEALS into a Nigerian war zone to rescue several US nationals. Doctor Monica Bellucci, however, refuses to leave without her patients so Bruce, after a surprising change of heart, decides to lead them all to safety through a particularly dangerous stretch of jungle. It was a tough role as much of the movie's true drama - the sacrificing of innocent lives, the disobeying of orders, the risking of his own men - had to be played out on Willis's own face. Once again, he proved himself more than able.

Returning to comedy, Bruce reprised his role as Jimmy The Tulip in a sequel to The Whole Nine Yards, this time rescuing the bumbling Matthew Perry from a gang of Hungarian kidnappers. 2005 would see a string of new releases (as well as a string of musical dates in Las Vegas). First would come Hostage, where he played an LA hostage negotiator who suffers a terrible professional experience and moves to less challenging climes. Unfortunately, he gets involved in another hostage crisis, one complicated by the fact that his own wife and kid have been simultaneously kidnapped, with a ransom demand that turns the original job into a nightmare. It was gloomy fare, but ingenious and, despite Willis's claims that he'd never return to action movies, it was action-packed. The film would also see the debut of Bruce's daughter, Rumer.

Also gloomy, but far more ingenious would be Robert Rodriguez's visually-stunning Sin City, based on the graphic novels of Frank Miller. This was set in a seedy, violent noir-world, where the stories of several tortured denizens collided. Bruce would play John Hartigan, a cop jailed for a crime he didn't commit, who discovers on his release that the girl he was protecting when first framed is now being menaced by an utter psycho. Joining him in a truly stellar cast would be Mickey Rourke, Clive Owen and Josh Hartnett.

Willis then moved on to Alpha Dog, written and directed by Nick Cassavetes and based on the real-life story of Jesse James Hollywood. He was a young drug dealer who, inspired by his vagabond father, managed to buy himself a $200,000 house at the age of 19 but then blew everything when he kidnapped and killed the 15-year-old brother of a client who owed him $1500, being then forced to go on the run. Alpha Dog, which would also feature pop star Justin Timberlake and Bruce's old Seagrams-advertising buddy Sharon Stone, would see Willis play the charismatic father, whose buccaneering attitude to crime saw his son go wrong. Filmed in late 2004, it would be close to release when Hollywood was finally caught after a 4-year search by the FBI, hiding out in Brazil. Oddly, just as he was being deported back to the States, his father would be busted on suspicion of drug possession.

Next up would come more noir with a role in Lucky Number Sleven, where Bruce's Sin City co-star Josh Hartnett became embroiled in a savage New York turf war between Jewish and Afro-American gangs led by Ben Kingsley and Morgan Freeman respectively. Then Willis would replace Jim Carrey as the voice of a con-artist racoon in the animation Over The Hedge, where forest animals attempted to resist the lure of encroaching suburbia. And, unarguably proving the foolishness of that "no more action movies" quote, there'd be Die Hard 4.0, written by hostage scribe Doug Richardson, who pictured John McClane, now retired, teaming with his daughter to battle terrorists in the Caribbean.

Having been paid $22.5 million for Hart's War, as well as huge sums for The Whole Ten Yards and Hostage, Bruce Willis remains right up there with Tom Cruise at the top of the A-list. Fair enough, considering his movies have taken far in excess of $2 billion at the box-office. Also, the publicity surrounding his private life has seldom been more frantic. Having dated Spanish model Maria Bravo Rosado, he'd also be connected to ---- star Alisha Klass, actress Estella Warren and Czech model Eva Jasanovska, on top of a series of scurrilous reports claiming he'd helped bring an end to Monica Bellucci's marriage. 2004 would see him end a 10-month relationship with actress Brooke Burns, a Baywatch babe 23 years his junior. Meanwhile, his ex-wife Demi Moore was doing her bit to keep Bruce in the tabloids, with Willis often turning up alongside Moore, their kids and Moore's toy-boy lover Ashton Kutcher.

Nearly 20 years of massive fame, and still going strong. Not bad at all for a stuttering van-driver called Walter.

Dominic Wills

[Marichka]

Few Victorians are as well-remembered today as Charles Robert Darwin. Born into a wealthy Shropshire gentry family, Darwin grew up amidst wealth, comfort and country sports. An unimpressive student, Darwin vacillated between the prospect of becoming a country physician, like his father, or a clergyman. The advantage to becoming a country parson, as Darwin saw it, would be the freedom to pursue his growing interest in natural history. However, an unforeseen opportunity precluded these early plans. After his student days in Edinburgh and Christ's College Cambridge, Darwin's connections in 1831 offered him the opportunity of travelling on a survey ship, H.M.S. Beagle, as naturalist and the captain's gentleman dining companion. The round-the-world journey lasted almost five years. Darwin spent most of these years investigating the geology and life of the lands he visited, especially South America, the Galapagos islands, and pacific coral islands.

Darwin also read the works of men of science like Alexander von Humboldt and the geologist Charles Lyell. Lyell's new book, Principles of Geology, was particularly influential for Darwin. Lyell argued that the world had been shaped not by great catastrophes like floods but by the gradual processes we see active around us: wind, erosion, volcanoes, earthquakes etc. Lyell offered not just a new geology but a new way of explaining the world. Slow gradual cumulative change over a long period of time could produce great effects. Visible non-miraculous causes should be preferred when seeking explanations. Darwin had the opportunity to witness all of these forces himself during the Beagle voyage and he became convinced that something like Lyell's method was correct. Darwin also collected organisms of all sorts, as well as unearthing many fossils. Darwin wondered why the fossils he unearthed in South America resembled the present inhabitants of that continent more than any other life form known. Where had the new species come from? In fact, why was the world covered with so many different kinds of living things? Why were some very similar to one another and others vastly different? Why did some desert species live in deserts in Africa, but quite different species in the Americas? If species suited their environments, why were not all jungle species the same in Asia, Africa and South America? Instead each region had its own fauna and flora.

Darwin did not hit on a solution during the Beagle voyage, but rather a few years later in London, while writing books on his travels and studying the specimens he had collected. Experts in London were able to tell him how many of the species of plants and animals he had collected in the Galapagos Islands were unique species, found nowhere else. Clearly they resembled species from South America 500 miles away. It seemed as if migrants from South America had come to the Galapagos and then changed.

Darwin began to speculate on how species could arise by means still active around us. His idiosyncratic eclecticism led him to investigate some unconventional evidence. He made countless inquiries of animal breeders, both farmers and hobbyists like pigeon fanciers, trying to understand how they made distinct breeds of animals. Gradually Darwin decided that organisms were infinitely variable, and that the supposed limits or barriers to species were a myth. In modern terms we would say that Darwin came to accept that life evolves. In other words that the kinds of organisms in the world are not fixed kinds. The conventional view of the time was that species had been created where they are now found- in accordance with the environment.

Darwin then sought to explain how evolution works. He was familiar with the evolutionary theories earlier proposed by his grandfather Erasmus Darwin and by the great French zoologist J.B. Lamarck. But already Darwin's thinking was far in advance of theirs. He was thinking of the history of life as a branching genealogical tree, not of independent lineages somehow impelled to progress upwards.

In 1838 Darwin read the Rev. Thomas Malthus's Essay on the Principle of Population (1798). Malthus was widely believed to have conclusively demonstrated that human population growth would necessarily outstrip food production unless population growth was somehow checked. Population growth was geometrical. For example, two parents might have four children, each of whom could have four children, whose children could also have four children. Thus in four generations there would be an increase from 2 to 4 to 24 to 96 an so forth.

The focus of this argument inspired Darwin. He realised that an enormous proportion of living things are destroyed before they can reproduce. This must be true because every species would breed enough to fill the earth in a few hundred generations. But they do not do so. Populations remain roughly stable year after year. The only way this can be so is that most offspring do not survive long enough to reproduce. For example, there are around 9 million cats in Britain today. There are about 120 million birds. Britain's cats kill about 60 million birds per year. Many millions more die from loss of habitat, starvation, disease, flying into windows, cars and so forth. Yet the bird population is not declining. So although birds are breeding at a Malthusian rate, accidents and predation and so forth kill so many that the population size essentially stands still.

Darwin, already concentrating on how new varieties of life might be formed, suddenly realised that the key to evolution was whatever made a difference between those that survive to reproduce and those that do not. He called this open-ended collection of multifarious causes 'natural selection'.

As Darwin wrote in his autobiography in 1876: 'In October 1838, that is, fifteen months after I had begun my systematic inquiry, I happened to read for amusement Malthus on Population, and being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which everywhere goes on from long-continued observation of the habits of animals and plants, it at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The results of this would be the formation of a new species. Here, then I had at last got a theory by which to work'. Below is the famous passage from Darwin's personal notebook where these ideas were first recorded:

[Sept] 28th.[1838] Even the energetic language of Decandolle does not convey the warring of the species as inference from Malthus - increase of brutes must be prevented solely by positive checks, excepting that famine may stop desire. —in nature production does not increase, whilst no check prevail, but the positive check of famine and consequently death. . .

...—The final cause of all this wedging, must be to sort out proper structure, and adapt it to change.—to do that for form, which Malthus shows is the final effect by means however of volition of this populousness on the energy of man. One may say there is a force like a hundred thousand wedges trying [to] force every kind of adapted structure into the gaps in the economy of nature, or rather forming gaps by thrusting out weaker ones.

Or, as Darwin later put it in the Origin of Species (1859):

As many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive; and as, consequently, there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence, it follows that any being, if it vary however slightly in any manner profitable to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected. From the strong principle of inheritance, any selected variety will tend to propagate its new and modified form.

Therefore only the survivors would pass on their form and abilities. Their characteristics would persist and multiply whilst characteristics of those that did not live long enough to reproduce would decrease. Darwin did not know precisely how inheritance worked—genes and DNA were totally unknown. Nevertheless he appreciated the crucial point that inheritance occurs. Offspring resemble their parents. Darwin thought in terms of populations of diverse heritable things with no essence—not representatives of ideal types as many earlier thinkers had done. From his observations and experiments with domesticated and wild plants and animals he could find no limits to the extent organic forms could vary and change through generations. Thus the existing species in the world were related not along a chain of being or in statically separate species categories but were all related on a genealogical family tree through 'descent with modification'.

Darwin also identified another means by which some individuals would have descendants and others would not. He later called this sexual selection. This theory explained why the male --- in many species produce colourful displays or specialised body parts to attract females or to compete against other males. Those males who beat other males, or were selected for breeding by females left more offspring and so subsequent generations would resemble them more than those who succeeded less often to reproduce. As Darwin pointed out, "A hornless stag or spurless cock would have a
poor chance of leaving offspring."

Darwin, deeply studied in the sciences of his time, yet living somewhat removed from his colleagues as a closet theorist, was able to think in new ways and to conceive of worlds quite unimaginable to his orthodox friends. However, the legend of Darwin as a lone genius discovering evolution by natural selection on the Galapagos Islands is a legend whose fabrication we can reconstruct. Nevertheless, it seems to be so widespread today that nothing historians say to the contrary can dislodge it. Perhaps the best antidotes are the excellent biographies of Darwin by Janet Browne (1995, 2002) and Desmond and Moore (1991).

Many have argued that Darwin borrowed an idea of individual struggle from laissez-faire social theory and applied it to the natural world. Karl Marx was perhaps the first to observe that Darwin's theories of individual struggle resembled contemporary British theories of political economy. The logic of these social theories is moving. However, there is no clear evidence of a specific causal connection between these social factors and Darwin's thought. Of course Darwin was not isolated from the social environments in which he lived. Nevertheless, Darwin spent most of his time thinking about the properties of organisms, how they all vary to some degree, how apparent lineages resemble one another, and how the rigours of nature meant that a vast quantity of life was constantly being snuffed out in a natural winnowing of forms. The important point for Darwin was not the survival of an individual, or as Herbert Spencer called it, the 'survival of the fittest', but success in creating offspring—in the perpetuation of a stock. After all, Darwin named his theory 'natural selection' not 'individual competition' or 'survival of the ruthless'. Had he used an alternative, he later wrote, it would have been "natural preservation". Historians often miss the point when seeking ideological, social, or other contextual influences behind Darwin's theory of evolution. Although these are the things of most interest and importance to historians, they were not so for the young Darwin. The most important thing for Darwin was his "long-continued observation of the habits of animals and plants".

As far as we know, Darwin did not, at first, tell anyone about his speculations. Perhaps the first colleague to be told was his correspondent, the botanist J.D. Hooker on 14 January 1844: 'I am almost convinced, (quite contrary to opinion I started with) that species are not (it is like confessing a murder) immutable'. Darwin told only a handful of other friends of his ideas during the succeeding years. Meanwhile he married his cousin Emma Wedgwood in 1839 and continued to study and publish on a variety of scientific subjects achieving a great reputation as a naturalist and traveller. His eight years gruelling work on barnacles, published 1851-4 established Darwin's reputation as an authority on taxonomy as well as geology and the distribution of flora and fauna as in his earlier works.

Darwin conducted breeding experiments with animals and plants and corresponded and read widely for many years to refine and substantiate his theories of evolution. In 1842 he prepared an essay outlining his evolutionary theory. After completing his work on barnacles Darwin turned to his theory to explain species. He was interrupted in 1858 when a letter from an English naturalist and collector, Alfred Russel Wallace, in the Malay Archipelago arrived. In an essay enclosed with this now famous letter Wallace described his ideas 'On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely From the Original Type'. The similarity to Darwin's theory of evolution was striking for Darwin. He sent the letter on to Lyell and it was decided, to avoid competition for priority, to publicise abstracts by both men as soon as possible. The papers were read in the absence of Darwin and Wallace at a meeting of the Linnean Society of London in 1858. Darwin worked on creating an 'abstract' of his work in progress on natural selection. This abstract became one of the most famous books of modern times On the Origin of Species (1859).

Although Darwin's exposition was the most accurate and well-supported explanation for the diversity of life, he was not the first to propose that life evolves. A glance at Darwin's 'An historical sketch of the progress of opinion on the origin of species' shows that Darwin made no pretence to have originated or discovered evolution by descent with modification. However, Darwin's understanding of branching descent was more accurate than many of his predecessors who considered one species or family changing over time. We know that a wide popular literature such as George Combe's Constitution of Man (1828) and the anonymous Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844) had already shocked and converted vast popular audiences to belief in the power of natural laws to control the development of nature and society. Historians of science now believe that Darwin's effect was, as James Secord put it, a 'palace coup' amongst elite men of science rather than a revolution. Darwin, as an unquestionably respectable authority in elite science, publicly threw his weight on the side of evolution, and soon young allies like Hooker, T.H. Huxley, and John Tyndall publicly threw their own weight towards the same position. Darwin's name is so linked with evolution because he was the high-status insider who made evolution acceptable, even respectable. Most of his contemporaries did not particularly like Darwin's primary mechanism of natural selection. Very often in subsequent years evolution was accepted but natural selection was not. In fact, a generation of biologists regarded Darwin as correct in uncovering the evolution of life but mistaken in stressing natural selection. Natural selection's canonisation had to wait until the modern synthesis of Darwinism with Mendelian genetics in the 1930s. This is rather odd if, as so many historians assert, natural selection was just Darwin's way of applying his social world onto nature.

Like Combe, Babbage, Chambers, Spencer and countless other authors before him, Darwin represented his doctrine as furthering the domain of natural laws. We see this in the following epigraph chosen by Darwin for the Origin of Species:

" But with regard to the material world, we can at least go so
far as this-we can perceive that events are brought about not by
insulated interpositions of Divine power, exerted in each particular
case, but by the establishment of general laws."

W. WHEWELL : Bridgewater Treatise.

Darwin even saw the power of his law of natural selection extending beyond life to what we would call psychology, linguistics, and to society and history (see for example Descent of Man chapter 3, 1871).

The Origin of Species

In the Origin of Species Darwin first tried to convince his readers that organisms are utterly malleable and not fixed natural kinds. He showed that domestic plants and animals were known to be highly variable and to have changed so much under domestication as to be classified as different species by taxonomists. He then showed that the existence and abundance of organisms was dependent on many factors, many of which tended to hold their numbers in check such as climate, food, predation, available space etc. Only then did Darwin set about showing the effects of differential death and survival on reproduction and the persistence and diversification of forms—natural selection. In other words Darwin's theory of evolution has three main elements or requirements: variation, selection and descent or heredity. If all individual life forms are unique, which no one denied, and these differences could make a difference to which organisms lived to reproduce and which did not, then, if these differences could be inherited by offspring, subsequent generations would be descended from those which were lucky enough to survive.

An illustrative example is seen in the recent work of biologists in the Galapagos Islands. During a drought season when no new seeds were produced for an island's finches to eat, the finches were forced to hunt for remaining seeds on the ground. Soon all the visible seeds had been devoured. It so happened that those with slightly thicker bills than average could turn over stones a little bit better than the rest to find the remaining seeds and so they managed to survive the famine. The others perished. When the drought ended and the birds again had young, this new generation had slightly thicker bills. This is an example of Darwinian evolution observed and measured in the field. (See Jonathan Weiner, The Beak of the Finch. 1994.)

Darwin's theory of genealogical evolution (as opposed to earlier theories by Lamarck or Chambers which entailed independent lineages unfolding sequentially because of an innate tendency towards progress) made sense of a host of diverse bodies of evidence such as the succession of fossil forms in the geological record, geographical distribution of life (biogeography), recapitulative appearances in embryology, homologies, vestigial organs, the taxonomic relationships observed throughout the world and so forth.

The famous last paragraph of the Origin of Species is a concise and eloquent précis of Darwin's vision:

It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the external conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.


Modern commentators often misunderstand the meaning of the title of Darwin's book. They take the origin of species to mean the origin of life. Then it is pointed out that Darwin 'failed' to throw light on the origin of life. But this was not Darwin's project. Darwin argued that species—that is the different kinds of organisms we observe—come not from multiple unique creation events on each island or particular place—but instead that species are the modified descendants of earlier forms. Darwin demonstrated that the origination of species could be entirely explained by descent with modification and not spontaneous creations according to environmental circumstances or divine interventions.

The reactions to Darwin's evolutionary theories were varied and pronounced. In zoology, taxonomy, botany, palaeontology, philosophy, anthropology, psychology, literature and religion Darwin's work engendered profound reactions—many of which are still ongoing. Most disturbing of all, however, were the implications for the cherished uniqueness of Man. Although Darwin cautiously refrained from mentioning Man in the Origin except for his famous cryptic sentence: 'Much light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history' most people who read the book could think only about what this genealogical view of life meant for Man. This is a subject Darwin later took up in The Descent of Man (1871) and The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872). In these brilliantly original and seminal works Darwin showed that there is no difference of kind between Man and other animals, but only of degree. Rather than an unbridgeable gulf, Darwin showed there is a gradation of change not only between Man and other animals, but between all organic forms which is a consequence of the gradual change continuously and cumulatively operating over time.


Darwin's massive achievements are not restricted to his early scientific works and his evolutionary works. His keen observation, imagination, curiosity and energy allowed him to make strikingly prescient contributions to ecology, botany and a dozen of what would later be distinct disciplines. Darwin was very impressed by the inter-relatedness of different species, climate and environment. He stressed that the life in any area was the outcome of an amazing history of struggle or war or 'great battle for life'. He proposed new solutions to how organisms spread across the globe. His numerous discoveries and theories are too numerous to list here. In his final book published the year before his death, The formation of vegetable mould through the action of worms (1881) Darwin again made an important contribution which, as was characteristic of Darwin, revealed the amazing complexity and importance of a natural process of gradual accumulation, which no one seemed to have grasped before, and that had all along been under our feet.

A myth about Darwin still circulates today—that he repented of evolutionism or converted to Christianity on his deathbed. These stories are usually circulated by those who would like them to be true, but they are not. There are no mysteries surrounding Darwin's death; his relatives present at the time wrote detailed accounts of his last hours. The history of the legend, however, is very interestingly and fulsomely revealed in James Moore, The Darwin legend (1994). Darwin was not an atheist, but a deist; that is he believed that some creating intelligence had designed the universe and set up natural laws according to which all of nature was unwaveringly governed.

Charles Darwin was a mild, kind, pleasant man, unassuming and sincerely modest. He suffered from an unexplained illness much of his adult life (perhaps picked up during the Beagle voyage). He nevertheless remained driven and ambitious to explore nature and examine it candidly and to remain part of the elite scientific world he respected and admired. Darwin died in 1882 and he is buried in Westminster Abbey.

[Marichka]

Francis Crick
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1962
Biography

Francis Harry Compton Crick was born on June 8th, 1916, at Northampton, England, being the elder child of Harry Crick and Annie Elizabeth Wilkins. He has one brother, A. F. Crick, who is a doctor in New Zealand.
Crick was educated at Northampton Grammar School and Mill Hill School, London. He studied physics at University College, London, obtained a B.Sc. in 1937, and started research for a Ph.D. under Prof E. N. da C. Andrade, but this was interrupted by the outbreak of war in 1939. During the war he worked as a scientist for the British Admiralty, mainly in connection with magnetic and acoustic mines. He left the Admiralty in 1947 to study biology.
Supported by a studentship from the Medical Research Council and with some financial help from his family, Crick went to Cambridge and worked at the Strangeways Research Laboratory. In 1949 he joined the Medical Research Council Unit headed by M. F. Perutz of which he has been a member ever since. This Unit was for many years housed in the Cavendish Laboratory Cambridge, but in 1962 moved into a large new building - the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology - on the New Hospital site. He became a research student for the second time in 1950, being accepted as a member of Caius College, Cambridge, and obtained a Ph.D. in 1954 on a thesis entitled «X-ray diffraction: polypeptides and proteins».
During the academic year 1953-1954 Crick was on leave of absence at the Protein Structure Project of the Brooklyn Polytechnic in Brooklyn, New York. He has also lectured at Harvard, as a Visiting Professor, on two occasions, and has visited other laboratories in the States for short periods.
In 1947 Crick knew no biology and practically no organic chemistry or crystallography, so that much of the next few years was spent in learning the elements of these subjects. During this period, together with W. Cochran and V. Vand he worked out the general theory of X-ray diffraction by a helix, and at the same time as L. Pauling and R. B. Corey, suggested that the alpha-keratin pattern was due to alpha-helices coiled round each other.
A critical influence in Crick's career was his friendship, beginning in 1951, with J. D. Watson, then a young man of 23, leading in 1953 to the proposal of the double-helical structure for DNA and the replication scheme. Crick and Watson subsequently suggested a general theory for the structure of small viruses.
Crick in collaboration with A. Rich has proposed structures for polyglycine II and collagen and (with A. Rich, D. R. Davies, and J. D.Watson) a structure for polyadenylic acid.
In recent years Crick, in collaboration with S. Brenner, has concentrated more on biochemistry and genetics leading to ideas about protein synthesis (the «adaptor hypothesis»), and the genetic code, and in particular to work on acridine-type mutants.
Crick was made an F.R.S. in 1959. He was awarded the Prix Charles Leopold Meyer of the French Academy of Sciences in 1961, and the Award of Merit of the Gairdner Foundation in 1962. Together with J. D. Watson he was a Warren Triennial Prize Lecturer in 1959 and received a Research Corporation Award in 1962. With J. D. Watson and M. H. F. Wilkins he was presented with a Lasker Foundation Award in 1960. In 1962 he was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Fellow of University College, London. He was a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge, in 1960-1961, and is now a non-resident Fellow of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, San Diego, California.
In 1940 Crick married Ruth Doreen Dodd. Their son, Michael F. C. Crick is a scientist. They were divorced in 1947. In 1949 Crick married Odile Speed. They have two daughters, Gabrielle A. Crick and Jacqueline M. T. Crick. The family lives in a house appropriately called «The Golden Helix», in which Crick likes to find his recreation in conversation with his friends.

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[Marichka]

James Watson
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1962
Biography

James Dewey Watson was born in Chicago, Ill., on April 6th, 1928, as the only son of James D. Watson, a businessman, and Jean Mitchell. His father's ancestors were originally of English descent and had lived in the midwest for several generations. His mother's father was a Scottish-born taylor married to a daughter of Irish immigrants who arrived in the United States about 1840. Young Watson's entire boyhood was spent in Chicago where he attended for eight years Horace Mann Grammar School and for two years South Shore High School. He then received a tuition scholarship to the University of Chicago, and in the summer of 1943 entered their experimental four-year college.
In 1947, he received a B.Sc. degree in Zoology. During these years his boyhood interest in bird-watching had matured into a serious desire to learn genetics. This became possible when he received a Fellowship for graduate study in Zoology at Indiana University in Bloomington, where he received his Ph.D. degree in Zoology in 1950. At Indiana, he was deeply influenced both by the geneticists H. J. Muller and T. M. Sonneborn, and by S. E. Luria, the Italian-born microbiologist then on the staff of Indiana's Bacteriology Department. Watson's Ph.D. thesis, done under Luria's able guidance, was a study of the effect of hard X-rays on bacteriophage multiplication.
From September 1950 to September 1951 he spent his first postdoctoral year in Copenhagen as a Merck Fellow of the National Research Council. Part of the year was spent with the biochemist Herman Kalckar, the remainder with the microbiologist Ole Maaløe. Again he worked with bacterial viruses, attempting to study the fate of DNA of infecting virus particles. During the spring of 1951, he went with Kalckar to the Zoological Station at Naples. There at a Symposium, late in May, he met Maurice Wilkins and saw for the first time the X-ray diffraction pattern of crystalline DNA. This greatly stimulated him to change the direction of his research toward the structural chemistry of nucleic acids and proteins. Fortunately this proved possible when Luria, in early August 1951, arranged with John Kendrew for him to work at the Cavendish Laboratory, where he started work in early October 1951.
He soon met Crick and discovered their common interest in solving the DNA structure. They thought it should be possible to correctly guess its structure, given both the experimental evidence at King's College plus careful examination of the possible stereochemical configurations of polynucleotide chains. Their first serious effort, in the late fall of 1951, was unsatisfactory. Their second effort based upon more experimental evidence and better appreciation of the nucleic acid literature, resulted, early in March 1953, in the proposal of the complementary double-helical configuration.
At the same time, he was experimentally investigating the structure of TMV, using X-ray diffraction techniques. His object was to see if its chemical sub-units, earlier revealed by the elegant experiments of Schramm, were helically arranged. This objective was achieved in late June 1952, when use of the Cavendish's newly constructed rotating anode X-ray tubes allowed an unambiguous demonstration of the helical construction of the virus.
From 1953 to 1955, Watson was at the California Institute of Technology as Senior Research Fellow in Biology. There he collaborated with Alexander Rich in X-ray diffraction studies of RNA. In 1955-1956 he was back in the Cavendish, again working with Crick. During this visit they published several papers on the general principles of virus construction.
Since the fall of 1956, he has been a member of the Harvard Biology Department, first as Assistant Professor, then in 1958 as an Associate Professor, and as Professor since 1961. During this interval, his major research interest has been the role of RNA in protein synthesis. Among his collaborators during this period were the Swiss biochemist Alfred Tissières and the French biochemist François Gros. Much experimental evidence supporting the messenger RNA concept was accumulated. His present principal collaborator is the theoretical physicist Walter Gilbert who, as Watson expressed it, «has recently learned the excitement of experimental molecular biology».
The honours that have to come to Watson include: the John Collins Warren Prize of the Massachusetts General Hospital, with Crick in 1959; the Eli Lilly Award in Biochemistry in the same year; the Lasker Award, with Crick and Wilkins in 1960; the Research Corporation Prize, with Crick in 1962; membership of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences, and Foreign membership of the Danish Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is also a consultant to the President's Scientific Advisory Committee.
Watson is unmarried. His recreations are bird-watching and walking.

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[H3SAM]

This is the brithney spears bio enjoy it kids

Name : Britney Spears

Real Name : Britney Jeau Spears

Nick Name : Bit-Bit, Brit

Date Of Birth : December 2, 1981

Place Of Birth : Kentwood, Louisiana USA

Sign : Sagittarius

Height : 5'4

Residence : New York and Kentwood

Hair : Brown

Brown : Eye

Father : Jamie Spears

Mother : Lynne Spears

Fan Mail : Britney Fan Club
P.O. Box 250
Osyka, MS 39657
USA

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Britney Spears may have titled her new single "Me Against The Music," but she has rarely been more creatively in tune than she is right now. "I feel like I've hit a great new stride as an artist," she says with pride. "I've worked hard, and I feel like I've grown on so many levels."

In truth, "Me Against The Music" is hardly about declaring war against grooves. "Actually, it's about the intensity that people approach music with," Britney shares. "It's about getting totally lost in the music and pushing yourself to the edge in every way you can imagine. I love thoroughly immersing myself in music, and I wanted to capture that intensity in a song."

Britney's musical intensity and her evolution from a teen renegade into a provocative young woman are undeniable throughout "In The Zone," her fourth Jive Records collection. First and foremost, the project shows her flexing notably strong and mature songwriting muscles. She co-wrote 7 of the project's 12 sterling new compositions, collaborating with such heavy hitters as Red Zone ("Me Against The Music," "The Hook Up"), The Matrix ("Shadow"), Moby ("Early Mornin'"), and Cathy Dennis ("Toxic," "Showdown"). Also contributing hit worthy material to the album is R. Kelly ("Outrageous"), Ying-Yang Twins on �(I Got That) Boom Boom.�

Perhaps most significant is the appearance of pop icon Madonna, who lends her voice to the single "Me Against The Music." Collaborating with one of her all-time greatest musical influences was a dream come true for Britney. "The experience was beyond words or description." she says. The two forged what has become a powerful bond while rehearsing for their now-notorious performance on the MTV Video Music Awards this fall. "As we were working together, there were moments when I simply could not believe that I was standing there on stage next to her. It was never even in the realm of fantasy for me."

The musical union of Britney and Madonna within the taut, classic-funk groove of "Me Against The Music" is quite real, though, and it reveals each of them at their most kinetic and soulful. The song's accompanying video clip, directed by Paul Hunter, shows Madonna enticing Britney through a maze-like underground club, only to disappear into thin air when Britney gets close enough to touch her. The clip is rife with symbolic gestures of Madonna passing the baton pop power to Britney --- an image that the young artist finds exciting, humbling, and perhaps a bit premature.

"There is only one Madonna --- and there will always only be one," she says. "My goal is to have a career that is equally as special, but one that is completely unique to who I am. I'm honored by all that Madonna brought to this song. I really love the flow we share --- both on the track and as friends. I think you can feel the chemistry and positive energy we shared. It's completely natural and relaxed."

The natural and relaxed vibe of "Me Against The Music" is indicative of every note and beat comprises "In The Zone," an album that runs the stylistic gamut from streetwise hip-hop and electro-trance to new-wave-etched rock and well-crafted pop. From top to bottom, Britney effectively expands the parameters of mainstream musical consciousness with songs that lure listeners with infectious hooks, and then captivates them with layers of clever lyrics and deft instrumentation.

"Putting this record together was an incredible journey for me," Britney says. "I had the freedom to explore and experiment with some of the most exciting people in music. In the end, that allowed me to make a record that is a pure reflection of where I am right now."

What we learn from album highlights like the rambunctious "(I Got That) Boom Boom," which features the Ying Yang Twins, and "Everytime," a stark, delicate collaboration with Guy Sigsworth, is that Britney has grown into a fearless artist. "Those songs are particularly special to me, because neither of them sounds like anything I've ever done before," she says. "'Boom Boom' is so rough and edgy and fun, while 'Everytime' is so raw and spare. It's me stripped to my core as a singer and as a songwriter. It's as honest as I've ever been in my music. I loved working with Guy on that track. He made me feel comfortable and safe enough to go the full distance, emotionally and as a performer." Britney also has high praise for Moby, who worked with her on the mid-tempo "Early Mornin.'" "He's such a pure-hearted guy," she says. "He's so cool. He played me a really cool track, and I thought it was brilliant. It's turned out to be one of my favorite songs on the album."

She describes "Early Mornin,'" which unfolds with a deceptively insistent, easy-paced dance groove as a day-after-the-party jam, which balances some of the more assertive, dance floor-friendly cuts on "In The Zone." "Some songs are generally about going out and wanting to have a good time," she says. "One of the things I did while working on this album was write about a lot things like going out with my girlfriends, everyday experiences that I was going through. 'Early Morning' is about just going out and feeling bad the next day." Elsewhere on "In The Zone," Britney shows her sultry side, particularly on the steamy, turntable-ready "Breathe On Me," a Mark Taylor production that she characterizes as being "very vibe-y, trance-y. It's about being with a guy and not even having to really be with each other, but just the intensity and the anxiety between not saying anything. You don't even have to touch me, just breathe on me."

Among the more sensual songs on the album is "Touch of My Hand," on which Britney seductively floats her voice atop an arrangement of pillowy strings and languid, Middle-Eastern-kissed guitar lines. "It's tastefully done," she says of the track. "And I think it's real. It's nice and it's real. It's whatever your take is. Some people may think it's a little much, but that's where I'm at with my life. ... It's not freaky freaky, it's just a little freaky." Stepping out on a creative limb has been the basis for Britney's entire career. Dubbed by MTV as "one of the last teenage pop superstars of the 20th century," Spears enjoyed her breakthrough success at the end of 1998. She appeared in local dance revues and church choirs as a young girl, and at the age of eight auditioned for The Mickey Mouse Club. Although she was too young to join the series, a producer on the show gave her an introduction to a New York agent. She subsequently spent three summers at the Professional Performing Arts School Center. She also appeared in a number of off-Broadway productions as a child actor, including 1991's "Ruthless." She returned to the Disney Channel for a spot on The Mickey Mouse Club, where she was featured for two years between the ages of 11 and 13. Her demo tape eventually landed in the hands of a Jive Records executive who quickly signed her to the label. She toured American venues for a series of concerts sponsored by U.S. teen magazines, eventually joining "N Sync on tour. It all added up to 1999's wildly infectious "...Baby One More Time" album to make its bow on the charts at No. 1. The set not only spawned a smash hit with the title tune, but also scored with the charming ballad "Sometimes" and the funky "(You Drive Me) Crazy." Before the album finished its impressive worldwide attack of the charts, it garnered Britney 4 MTV Europe Awards, including best pop performer, and 4 Billboard Music Awards, most notably female artist of the year.

The massive demand for new Britney material was satisfied when her 2000 sophomore collection, "Oops! ... I Did It Again," was released to a Spears-starved world in May. Once again, the title cut flooded radio airwaves, as did the anthemic "Stronger" and lovely "Don't Let Me Be The Last To Know." She also racked up more awards that year by taking home an American Music Award as favorite new artist, a Billboard Music Award as album artist of the year, and 2 Teen Choice Awards. Britney would later earn Teen Choice Award honors in 2001 and 2003. Ever-prolific, the artist returned in 2001 with "Britney," a spirited, assertive collection on which she began to reveal her mettle as a tunesmith, not to mention as a vocalist of increasingly soulful depth. She earned high praise for the wickedly sultry "Slave 4 U," as well as for the forceful "Overprotected" and the gentle "I'm Not A Girl, Not Yet A Woman." The album's was quickly followed by Britney's motion picture debut, "Crossroads," which proved that she has the talent and box-office pull to be a multifaceted superstar. "One of the true joys of my life and career has been trying out new things," Britney says. "I've loved every step of this journey I'm on. I love singing and dancing and acting and songwriting... it all energizes and inspires me." It's that philosophy that has sent Britney "In The Zone," a project that shows this ever-growing and ever-exciting at her absolute best... or as she would say, "for now." "I can't imagine ever reaching the point where I've hit the wall," she concludes. "There's always something new and challenging to tackle. I can't wait

[Marichka]

Born: 21 July 1951Where: Chicago, Illinois, USAAwards: Won 1 Oscar, 5 Golden Globes, nominated for 2 BAFTAsHeight: 5' 8"Filmography: The Complete List

Comedians have always had a tough time building a long-term career in cinema. For a start, as genuinely funny scripts are few and far between, they're usually forced to draw on their own well-worn routines and, after a few pictures, begin to bore their audience. No matter how brilliant, no comedian can keep carrying movies by sheer weight of personality, not indefinitely. Eddie Murphy and Steve Martin are proof of that. No, to really last, they must break through that barrier, become accepted as "proper" actors, and VERY few have done that.
Indeed, recently, there's only been one who's managed to take that mighty step. And, in many ways, he was the most unlikely of them all. Known to the world as the gibbering, gurning, beaming alien Mork from Ork, Robin Williams stood a very high chance of never, EVER being taken seriously. How could he be? Mork aside, in his stand-up routines he was a whirlwind of snappy one-liners, brilliant impressions and surreal asides, his ideas falling like rain. His first cinematic breakthrough, Good Morning Vietnam, was just Williams being Williams. So were other mega-hits, Mrs Doubtfire and Aladdin. The Oscar for Good Will Hunting was just for a cameo, really. A fluke. The guy could never really ACT. He'd never be able to stand still long enough.
Yet he could act. In fact, he HAD acted, quite brilliantly, before the box-office hits came. And, when the time came, in 2002, to spread his wings once again, he acted his ass off. Three movies, three characters, all killers but all different. Up against the King of Gravitas Al Pacino, he held his own. And up against the young pretender to the crown, Ed Norton. Now there was no denying it. The lightweight funny-man was actually a heavyweight artist.
He was born Robin McLaurim Williams on the 21st of July, 1951, in Chicago, Illinois, to a well-to-do family. His father, Robert, was an executive for the Ford Motor Company, while his mother, Laurie, was a fashion model. Both had children, by now grown, from earlier relationships. Robert's son Todd would later own a winery (and appear in Mrs Doubtfire, credited as Mr Toad), while Laurie's son became a High School chemistry teacher. As his step-brothers had left home, Robin was raised as an only child.

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[Marichka]

Milica Natasha Jovović (Serbian: Милица Јововић (Milica Jovović) Ukrainian: Мілла Йовович; born December 17, 1975), better known as Milla Jovovich, is a Ukrainian-born American supermodel, actress, musician, singer, and fashion design.

Jovovich has been described by Paul W.S. Anderson, director of her film Resident Evil, as a "rare combination of a good actress who could kick ass and look beautiful doing it."[1] Music channel VH1 has referred to her as the "reigning queen of kick-butt".

Biography
Early life
Jovovich (pronounced "Yo-vo-vitch" (/ˈjɔvɔviʧ/ in IPA)) was born in Kyiv, Ukraine (then part of the Soviet Union) to Bogdan Jovović, a Serbian doctor, and Galina Loginova, a Russian actress. Her paternal family is Montenegrin Serb in origin, their estate being at Metohija in Zlopek near Peć. Many Croatians claim Jovovich is a Croat, but this assertion is in fact erroneous. Her paternal great-grandfather, Bogić Camić Jovović, was flag-bearer of the Vasojevići tribe and officer of the guard of the King Nicholas I of Montenegro; his wife's name was also Milica. Her paternal grandfather, Bogdan Jovović, was a commander in the Pristina military area, and later investigated finances in military areas of Skopje and Sarajevo, where he uncovered massive gold embezzlement. He was punished for refusing to convict his friend for the crime. Later, the communist government imprisoned him on Goli Otok. When he feared that he could be arrested again, he escaped to Albania and later moved to Kyiv. Another version of the story claims that he was the one to have taken the gold. Milla's father, Bogić Jovović, later joined her grandfather in Kyiv, where he and his sister graduated in medicine.[3].

In 1981, The family moved to London, and subsequently lived in Sacramento, California. Seven months later, they settled in Los Angeles, California.

Career

Milla Jovovich, 11, on the cover of Italian magazine Lei

At the age of eleven, Jovovich was spotted by the photographer Richard Avedon, who featured her in Revlon's "Most Unforgettable Women in the World" advertisements. In October 1987, she was featured on the cover of the Italian fashion magazine Lei, which was the first of her many cover shoots. She continued to model and in 1988, appeared in her first film role, the romance thriller Two Moon Junction.

In 1991, Jovovich had a starring role in the romance adventure sequel Return to the Blue Lagoon, opposite Brian Krause, which led to comparisons between her and child model-turned-actress, Brooke Shields (who had starred in the original Blue Lagoon). Most of Jovovich's film appearances during the early 1990s were in supporting or cameo roles.

In 1994, Jovovich, billed under her first name, released her critically acclaimed first musical album, The Divine Comedy. Featuring many original songs, the album led to comparisons with musicians Tori Amos and Kate Bush. After leading a band called Plastic Has Memory, Jovovich returned to her acting career, receiving top billing and entering the world of action heroes, with her performances in The Fifth Element (1997) and in two popular films based upon the survival horror series, Resident Evil.

Jovovich's vocals appeared on the 2004 album Legion of Boom by The Crystal Method. She also recorded the single Rocket Collecting, which appeared on the soundtrack for the film Underworld.

Jovovich and fellow model Carmen Hawk have launched a line of clothing called Jovovich-Hawk; the two opened a showroom in New York City's Greenwich Village on September 13, 2005. Jovovich is also an "international spokes model" for L'Oreal cosmetics and was the highest paid Supermodel in 2004. In 2006 Jovovich was picked up by Mango, a Spanish clothing line, as their new spokes model. Mango tells Vouge.com, that Jovovich is "the image of the woman that [we] wish to dress: a very modern woman, with personality and self-confidence".[1]. She has said that she enjoys having both a modelling and an acting career, and that she is "very grateful for [her] looks", which allow her to "make really great film choices".[1]

Milla Jovovich on the poster for Ultraviolet (2006).

Jovovich's latest film, the science fiction/action thriller Ultraviolet, was released on March 3, 2006. It was not screened for critics, but when reviewed, it was critically panned;[4] It has grossed $17 million at the domestic box office.[5] She will appear in the third film in the Resident Evil series.

Jovovich is also planning to publish her private diaries as an autobiography. The autobiography could possibly recall her experiences in Hollywood and in the modeling world. Jovovich says, "I've been keeping a diary ever since I was a little girl. I've written about all the places I've been to and all the mad things that I've done, so it would be good to get it all into a book - like an autobiography, but with more of a diary feel to it. I'm not sure how interested anyone would be in publishing it, or reading it, for that matter."[2]
[edit]

Personal life

Jovovich married actor Shawn Andrews in October of 1992, while filming Dazed and Confused together; the marriage was annulled a month later. She married The Fifth Element director Luc Besson in 1997, but the two divorced in 1999. Jovovich also dated Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante for several years and was linked to actor Stephen Dorff. She also had a relationship with Jamiroquai ex-bassist Stuart Zender, during which time they both lived in London. In 2003, she was briefly engaged to writer/director Paul W. S. Anderson. She has been appearing in public lately with Japanese soccer-star Nakata Hidetoshi.

Jovovich is multilingual and speaks Russian, French and English fluently.
[edit]

Selected filmography
Year Movie Role Notes
1988 Two Moon Junction Samantha Delongpre
1991 Return to the Blue Lagoon Lilli Hargrave
1992 Kuffs Maya Carlton
Chaplin Mildred Harris
1993 Dazed and Confused Michelle Burroughs
1997 The Fifth Element Leeloo
1998 He Got Game Dakota Burns
1999 The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc Joan of Arc
2000 The Claim Lucia Limited release
2001 The Million Dollar Hotel Eloise Limited release
Zoolander Katinka Ingabogovinanana
2002 Resident Evil Alice
You Stupid Man Nadine
2003 Dummy Fangora 'Fanny' Gurkel Limited release
No Good Deed Erin
2004 Resident Evil: Apocalypse Alice
2006 Ultraviolet Violet
.45 Kate Post-production
2007 Resident Evil: Extinction Alice Filming

Compilations including Jovovich
The Million Dollar Hotel - "Satellite of Love"
Hollywood Goes Wild benefit compilation - "On the Hill" by her band, Plastic Has Memory
Underworld - "Rocket Collecting"
The Prince and Me - "Separate Worlds"
The Rules of Attraction - "The Gentleman Who Fell"
Dummy - "Shein VI Di l'Vone" and "Mezinka"
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[Old Owl]

I want full bio of Charlie Chaplin.I need it.Please Write his Biography & filmography completly here....
Thanks a lot [ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]

[H3SAM]

I want full bio of Charlie Chaplin.I need it.Please Write his Biography & filmography completly here....
Thanks a lot [ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]

This is Charlie Chaplin biography this is not full bio of Charlie Chaplin

Charles Spencer Chaplin was born on 16 April 1889 in London and died on 25 December 1977 in Corsier sur Vevey in Switzerland.

Charlie Chaplin was a brilliant tragi-comic actor and director. The son of music hall performers, Chaplin joined Fred Karno's vaudeville troupe, leaving in 1913 to join Max Sennett at Keystone.

Charlie Chaplin soon started directing his own movies and 1914 his iconic character, the Tramp, made his first appearance in 'Kid Auto Races at Venice'. This tramp, vagabond character would be seen repeatedly in the fifty plus films Charlie Chaplin made in the next two years. The bowler hat, walking cane and moustache were there right from the start of Charlie Chaplin's movie career.

After enjoying great success, Chaplin was able to establish United Artists with Douglas Fairbanks Snr and D W Griffith.

His style was particularly suited to silent films. As he himself said in his autobiography: 'All I need to make a comedy is a park, a policeman and a pretty girl'.

Chaplin achieved great success with 'The Great Dictator', a satire on Hitler, made in 1940, for which Chaplin received his only Oscar nomination. (Although in 1972, Charlie Chaplin did receive an honarary Oscar). In 'The Great Dictator', Chaplin played two characters - the megalomaniac tyrant Ademoid Hynkel and his doppelganger, a little Jewish barber.

Dogged by marital scandals and troubles with the House UnAmerican Activities Committee, Chaplin emigrated from the USA to Switzerland.

His first post-war film, 'Monsieur Verdoux' had been initially banned by the Motion Picture Association's censor, and Chaplin was investigated for several years, but no indictments were ever handed down.

According to Alistair Cooke's excellent book, Six Men:

"After relasing 'Limelight', he packed for a holiday in Europe and he and his wife boarded the Queen Elizabeth on the 17th of September, 1952. Once the ship was well out at sea, the United States Attorney General rescinded Chaplin's re-entry permit on the vaguely rhetorical grounds that he was 'an unsavoury character' ..."

Charlie Chaplin was knighted in 1975.

Classic Chaplin films include: 'The Gold Rush' (1925), 'City Lights' (1931), and 'Modern Times' (1936).

[Marichka]

Birth Day: October 12, 1968
Place of Birth: Sydney, Australia
Role That Got Him Noticed: As Wolverine in the "X-Men" movies, Hugh Jackman captured the hearts of women worldwide.

directed by Bryan Singer. His first major U.S. film appearance in the original "X-Men" was followed by leading roles in such features as "Someone Like You" (opposite Ashley Judd and Greg Kinnear) and "Swordfish" (starring opposite John Travolta and Halle Berry). Jackman received a 2002 Golden Globe nomination for his role in "Kate & Leopold," starring with Meg Ryan.

Jackman’s career began in Australia withleading roles in the independent films "Paperback Hero" and "Erskineville Kings," for which he received a Best Actor award from the Australian Film Critics Circle and a Best Actor nomination from the Australian Film Institute. In 1999, he was named “Australian Star of the Year” at the Australian Movie Convention. Jackman’s additional credits include the hit Australian television series "Corelli" and "Halifax f.p."

Onstage, Jackman is currently starring on Broadway in the hit musical "The Boy from Oz," about the life and songs of singer/songwriter and fellow Australian Peter Allen. Previously, Jackman played Curly in Trevor Nunn’s revival of "Oklahoma!" at Britain’s National Theatre (which was also broadcast on PBS’ Great Performances). His performance earned him an Olivier Award nomination for Best Actor in a Musical. The production also received an International Emmy Award in the Performing Arts category. Prior to "The Boy from Oz," his most recent New York stage appearance was in a concert production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s "Carousel," opposite Audra McDonald at Carnegie Hall.

Jackman received the MO Award (Australia’s Tony Award) for Best Actor in a Musical for his performance in "Sunset Boulevard" and a MO Award nomination for Best Actor in a Musical for his performance as Gaston in "Beauty and the Beast."

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[Reza1969]

I want full bio of Charlie Chaplin.I need it.Please Write his Biography & filmography completly here....
Thanks a lot [ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]
Hi buddy

Here's what you asked for ;) :

Charles Chaplin

[ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]

Charlie Chaplin, considered to be one of the most pivotal stars of the early days of Hollywood, lived an interesting life both in his films and behind the camera. He is most recognized as an icon of the silent film era, often associated with his popular "Little Tramp" character; the man with the toothbrush mustache, bowler hat, bamboo cane, and a funny walk.

Charles Spencer Chaplin was born in Walworth, London, England on April 26th, 1889 to Charles and Hannah (Hill) Chaplin, both music hall performers, who were married on June 22nd, 1885. After Charles Sr. separated from Hannah to perform in New York City, Hannah then tried to resurrect her stage career. Unfortunately, her singing voice had a tendency to break at unexpected moments. When this happened, the stage manager spotted young Charlie standing in the wings and led him on stage, where five-year-old Charlie began to sing a popular tune. Charlie and his half-brother, Syd Chaplin (born Sydney Hawkes), spent their lives in and out of charity homes and workhouses between their mother's bouts of insanity. Hannah was committed to Cane Hill Asylum in May of 1903 and lived there until 1921, when Chaplin moved her to California.

Chaplin began his official acting career at the age of eight, touring with The Eight Lancashire Lads. At 18 he began touring with Fred Karno's vaudeville troupe, joining them on the troupe's 1910 US tour. He traveled west to California in December 1913 and signed on with Keystone Studios' popular comedy director Mack Sennett, who had seen Chaplin perform on stage in New York. Charlie soon wrote his brother Syd, asking him to become his manager. While at Keystone, Chaplin appeared in and directed 35 films, starring as the Little Tramp in nearly all. In November 1914 he left Keystone and signed on at Essanay, where he made 15 films. In 1916, he signed on at Mutual and made 12 films. In June 1917 Chaplin signed up with First National Studios, after which he built Chaplin Studios. In 1919 he and Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and D.W. Griffith formed United Artists (UA).

Chaplin's life and career was full of scandal and controversy. His first big scandal was during World War I, during which time his loyalty to England, his home country, was questioned. He had never applied for US citizenship, but claimed that he was a "paying visitor" to the United States. Many British citizens called Chaplin a coward and a slacker. This and his other career eccentricities sparked suspicion with FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover and the House Un-American Activities Council (HUAC), who believed that he was injecting Communist propaganda into his films. Chaplin's later film The Great Dictator (1940), which was his first "talkie", also created a stir. In the film Chaplin plays a humorous caricature of Adolf Hitler. Some thought the film was poorly done and in bad taste. However, it grossed over $5 million and earned five Academy Award Nominations.

Another scandal occurred when Chaplin briefly dated 22-year-old Joan Barry. However, Chaplin's relationship with Barry came to an end in 1942, after a series of harassing actions from her. In May of 1943 Barry returned to inform Chaplin that she was pregnant, and filed a paternity suit, claiming that the unborn child was his. During the 1944 trial blood tests proved that Chaplin was not the father, but at the time blood tests were inadmissible evidence and he was ordered to pay $75 a week until the child turned 21. Chaplin was also scrutinized for his support in aiding the Russian struggle against the invading Nazis during World War II, and the U.S. government questioned his moral and political views, suspecting him of having Communist ties. For this reason HUAC subpoenaed him in 1947. However, HUAC finally decided that it was no longer necessary for him to appear for testimony. Conversely, when Chaplin and his family traveled to London for the premier of _Limelight (1952)_ , he was denied re-entry to the United States. In reality, the government had almost no evidence to prove that he was a threat to national security. He and his wife decided, instead, to settle in Switzerland.

Chaplin was married four times and had a total of 11 children. In 1918 he wed Mildred Harris, they had a son together, Norman Spencer Chaplin, who only lived three days. Chaplin and Mildred were divorced in 1920. He married Lita Grey in 1924, who had two sons, Charles Chaplin Jr. and Sydney Chaplin. They were divorced in 1927. In 1936, Chaplin married Paulette Goddard and his final marriage was to Oona O'Neill (Oona Chaplin), daughter of playwright Eugene O'Neill in 1943. Oona gave birth to eight children: Geraldine Chaplin, Michael Chaplin, Josephine Chaplin, Victoria Chaplin, Eugene, Jane, Annette-Emilie and Christopher Chaplin.

In contrast to many of his boisterous characters, Chaplin was a quiet man who kept to himself a lot. He also had an "un-millionaire" way of living. Even after he had accumulated millions, he continued to live in shabby accommodations.

In 1921 Chaplin was decorated by the French government for his outstanding work as a filmmaker, and was elevated to the rank of Officer of the Legion of Honor in 1952. In 1972 he was honored with an Academy Award for his "incalculable effect in making motion pictures the art form of the century." In 1975 England's Queen Elizabeth II knighted him. Chaplin's other works included musical scores he composed for many of his films. He also authored two autobiographical books, "My Autobiography" in 1964 and its companion volume, "My Life in Pictures" in 1974. Chaplin died of natural causes on December 25, 1977 at his home in Switzerland.

In 1978, Chaplin's corpse was stolen from its grave and was not recovered for three months; he was re-buried in a vault surrounded by cement. Charlie Chaplin was considered one of the greatest filmmakers in the history of American cinema, whose movies were and still are popular throughout the world, and have even gained notoriety as time progresses. His films show, through the Little Tramp's positive outlook on life in a world full of chaos, that the human spirit has and always will remain the same.

[Old Owl]

Thanks a lot dear REZA and you He3am too.

[Marichka]

A Glimpse Into Yanni's Life and Career

He was born in a picturesque village that no one ever gave thought to leaving, and he's now known in every corner of the globe. Yanni is, without a doubt, a musical phenomenon, one of those rare artists whose music defies borders and boundaries - whose music speaks to people of all races, all nations. And there is more than ample evidence to support such statements.

How many artists have become the favored composer of every Olympic broadcast for the past decade? Sold-out Radio City Music Hall for ten dates? Played in the shadow of the Taj Mahal, the Forbidden City and the Parthenon? Toured China and more than twenty other nations? Had a TV special seen in 65 countries by half a billion people, was one of the top fundraising artists for PBS, and released what became the #2 best-selling music video of all time? Mounted the #1-ranked concert tour for 1998, and #2 for the entire year even though he did not tour for the second half?

Yanni has always charted a solitary and distinctive path. A champion swimmer and self-taught pianist with the gift of perfect pitch, he left the comforts of Kalamata, Greece, on the spectacular shores of the deep blue Mediterranean, and then began to fashion his own kind of American success story, later to become an international success story.

After graduating from the University of Minnesota with a B.A. in psychology, after trading the Grecian sunshine for frosty winters, he would seek a life in music, though he could not read a note and wrote wholly original works that, then and now, defy categorizing. From the beginning, he operated with a simple creed: a faith in hard work and keeping an open mind.

Yanni's first Grammy-nominated album was Dare to Dream (1992), which produced the vocal single "Aria," popularized by an award-winning British Airways commercial. His following album, In My Time, a gentler collection of piano-focused pieces, was also nominated for a Grammy Award and attained Platinum status. In 1994 Yanni achieved a personal triumph when he returned to his Greek homeland and recorded an album at the 2,000-year-old Herod Atticus Theatre in Athens. The result, Yanni: Live At The Acropolis, would be a sensation. It has almost continuously remained on the charts since its release, sold more than seven million copies worldwide, earned more than 35 platinum and gold albums, and risen to becoming one of the best-selling music videos of all time.

How to follow the unprecedented success of Live At The Acropolis? By becoming the first major Western Artist ever to perform and record at India's Taj Mahal and China's Forbidden City, resulting in the multi-platinum album Tribute. This is an artist who invested millions of dollars into the project before a single sound was recorded, whose organization mounted a near biblical effort with the regional of Uttar Pradesh to improve roads and build two bridges in order that the flood plains surrounding the Taj Mahal could be transformed for three historic concerts beneath one of the world's greatest wonders. While allowing India's citizens to see a musical performance in front of the country's signature structure, Tribute ultimately led to three million dollars in donations to a Taj preservation fund. The recording of Tribute proceeded to China, where Yanni staged a new historic feat at another of the world's great architectural achievements, The Forbidden City. Between India and China, Yanni played to a collective audience of 250 million people. In 2000 Yanni released his first studio album in seven years, If I Could Tell You, an introspective and deeply personal project which came in the wake of a two-year sabbatical, a move to the east coast of the U.S., and other changes which refocused his life and his life's work.

Yanni is an artist that crosses all demographics in his appeal. Recently he returned to PBS with a new television special, Live At Royal Albert Hall, London, offering not only a spectacular concert appearance in this historic venue, but also the first glimpse into his family home in Greece and recording studio in Florida.

In February 2003, Virgin Records released Ethnicity, his 13th album and third on Virgin. Extending the "One World, One People" philosophy that has been the hallmark of his career, Ethnicity offers an upbeat collection of tracks that pulse with the rhythms and voices of cultures around the globe. Its instrumentation is equally diverse: from the aboriginal depth of the Australian didgeridoo … to the haunting tone of the Armenian duduk … to Celtic-flavored violin … to the percussive plunk of the Indian tabla … the album brims with international flavor. "Many of the world's cultures and musical genres are represented on this album. It has a lot of ethnic color - in other words, it has ethnicity," says Yanni. "Ethnicity has to do with race and culture, and - in the way I use it for this album - the color and beauty of a multicultural society."

One element distinguishing Ethnicity from previous albums is the extensive use of human voices, not only solo arias and group chants, but also bona fide lyrics, a rare departure for the artist. "The Promise," for example, is an adaptation of an earlier composition, "Secret Vows," featuring lyrics from longtime friend Pamela McNeill and soulfully sung by Alfreda Gerald, a member of Yanni's Tribute tour. The album's final track reflects his own cultural heritage with a traditional Greek island folk song, "Jivaeri."

After a five-year break from touring, Yanni began an ambitious 2003/04 tour in March, 2003, opening at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, and featuring many of his new compositions and spotlighting the talents of solo musicians the world over along with his core band and symphony orchestra. The month before his tour opened, Miramax Books published Yanni's autobiography, a story that spans his fascinating and inspirational life: from his childhood in Greece to his college years in Minnesota to his success as an international music artist. The memoir, written in collaboration with David Rensin, also includes deeply personal details including his intense nine-year relationship with actress Linda Evans.

"I've been asked to write a book on many occasions but I was always focused first and foremost on my music and my career," said Yanni. "For the past few years I've had more of an opportunity to think deeply about life…I have tasted and felt so many things in my life and been welcomed all over the world. I have surpassed the wildest dreams I ever had as a child. I thought now was the right time to talk about it. What better reason to write a book? I am grateful to Miramax for this opportunity."

"Music," says Yanni, "is an incredibly direct language. It bypasses language and logic, and speaks directly to your soul." It is this notion that inspired the boy who began his musical career by giving recitals before family members in a seaside village, and who has since been communicating on a global level that few of his peers can match.

[ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]

[Sina.G]

Marshall Bruce Mathers III (born October 17, 1972) is an American rapper best known by the stage name Eminem. He is one of today's most popular and controversial rappers, and a Grammy and Oscar-winner. He is of mostly Scottish-American descent, and currently lives in Metro Detroit. Discovered by rapper/producer Dr. Dre, Eminem is known as one of the most skillful and controversial rappers in the industry, becoming a crossover sensation with his second single "My Name Is" while simultaneously earning respect from the hip-hop community for his lyrical talent. He is noted for his ability to change his own verbal pace (flow) and style multiple times within one song without losing the beat, and has been praised for his skill in alliteration and assonance. He is infamous for the controversy surrounding many of his lyrics. With the enormous success of his sophomore album The Marshall Mathers LP following its release in May 2000, and its subsequent nomination for four Grammy awards including Album of the Year, critics such as GLAAD denounced his lyrics as homophobic, while others complained that it was also extremely misogynistic and violent. However, he has received a great deal of praise within the hip-hop community for his lyrical ability. He is the second-highest selling rapper of all time, behind Tupac Shakur, though the latter has had several posthumous albums released.

While generally avoiding overtly political tones previously (or if they were mentioned it was in passing), in late 2004 before the presidential election, Eminem released the song "Mosh," which harshly criticizes President George W. Bush, the Media and is also suggested that it cites support for the 9/11 Truth Movement. Encore, Mathers' fourth major-label album, was released later that year, but was considered by many to be a disappointment in comparison to his previous three albums and only sold half as many albums as The Eminem Show had. His latest release is Curtain Call: The Hits, a compilation which covers many of his past hit songs, and includes three new tracks. Eminem has stated that Curtain Call may be his final solo album, but he continues to produce for and collaborate with Shady/Aftermath artists, his latest collaboration being with Trick-Trick, an up-and-coming Detroit rapper, in the song "Welcome 2 Detroit".

Early childhood
Mathers was born in St. Joseph, Missouri (near Kansas City) to parents Deborah "Debbie" Mathers-Briggs and Marshall Bruce Mathers II, and spent most of his childhood moving back and forth between Kansas City, and Metro Detroit, including Warren. His father had abandoned the family before Marshall turned two years old, and the two have not had contact since, save some rejected attempts by Marshall's father to contact Marshall after his rise to fame. Constantly moving from home to home, he frequently changed schools, often finding himself to be an outcast in the new communities, and frequently fell victim to bullying. An assault by schoolmate DeAngelo Bailey that left Marshall hospitalized was the most notable such incident, which Marshall would later recount in greatly exaggerated form on the track "Brain Damage" (The Slim Shady LP, 1999). The song prompted legal action by the assailant[1], with accusations of libel and privacy infringement, which were eventually dismissed in court.

His childhood was further marred by his family's meager financial status, which was the primary reason for their continuous moving, during which Marshall and his mother Debbie would often find themselves living in public housing, mobile homes, and under the care of relatives, such as Marshall's great-aunt Edna, whom he mentions in "Evil Deeds" (‘‘Encore’’). During this time, Debbie was legally taking the prescription drugs Vicodin and Valium, though Marshall later claimed in numerous interviews and songs that she was abusing the drugs,[2] to which Debbie retaliated with a lawsuit pressing defamation charges (see below). In the song "Cleaning Out My Closet" (The Eminem Show, 2002), Mathers also accuses his mother of having Munchausen syndrome by proxy, adding that "my whole life I was made to believe I was sick when I wasn't... it makes you sick to your stomach, doesn't it?". This was not the first time someone had suggested Debbie had the disorder; a social worker had made similar comments following a 1996 investigation of her mistreatment of Nathan Samra-Mathers, her second child.


Life before fame
Before dropping out of Lincoln High School Warren as a 9th grader at the age of 17 (after failing ninth grade three times), Marshall made a number of significant acquaintances at the school. This included fellow rapper Proof, who was to become one of his closest friends, the Runyon Avenue Soldiers, and future wife Kimberly Ann "Kim" Scott, with whom he soon developed a long-term relationship. When Kim became pregnant, this further increased Marshall's drive to succeed through concern over the welfare of his new family. He discusses this in "Never Far" (Infinite, 1996), saying "I got a baby on the way, I don't even got a car...I still stay with my moms...we gotta make some hit records or something [because] I'm tired of being broke..." When the Infinite album failed to generate the revenue and acclaim he had hoped for, and Kim ended their relationship, preventing him from seeing his newborn child, Marshall decided to take his own life. However, his suicide attempt using an overdose of Tylenol analgesics failed, and Marshall resumed his efforts to succeed in the music industry and reconcile with Kim.[3] He ultimately succeeded in doing both, marrying Kim on June 14, 1999 in St. Joseph, Missouri.

The couple's daughter, Hailie Jade Scott, born December 25, 1995 would grow to become an important part of Marshall's life, as he became dedicated to giving her everything he himself was deprived of in his childhood, including a father figure and financial security. He would go on to mention her extensively in some of his songs, including "'97 Bonnie & Clyde" (The Slim Shady LP, 1999), which takes the form of a one-sided dialogue with Hailie, as well as "Hailie's Song" (The Eminem Show, 2002), "Mockingbird" (‘‘Encore’’, 2004), and "When I'm Gone" (Curtain Call: The Hits, 2005), all of which are proclamations of his love and dedication to her. In addition, he samples her voice in the less serious upbeat track "My Dad's Gone Crazy" (The Eminem Show, 2002).


Legal troubles
The year 1999 was marked by a rise to celebrity status for Marshall, but it also ushered the beginning of his numerous legal troubles. The first of these was his mother Debbie's lawsuit against him in September of that year. The lawsuit was motivated by comments on Debbie's drug use made by Marshall on the song My Name Is (The Slim Shady LP, 1999), specifically the lyric "Ninety-nine percent of my life I was lied to/I just found out my mom does more dope than I do", and similar accusations in numerous interviews. Debbie refuted the statements and demanded more than $10 million in damages for defamation in two lawsuits. After rumors of Debbie dropping the suit, she and Marshall reached a settlement in 2001 for $25,000, with over $23,000 of it going to Debbie's former attorney Fred Gibson by a court order.[4] A request for reconsideration of the settlement by Debbie was denied by a judge.[5] Marshall's resentful reflections on the case can be heard on the song "Marshall Mathers" (The Marshall Mathers LP, 2000) in the lyrics "my fuckin' bitch mom is suing for 10 million/ she must want a dollar for every pill I've been stealin'" and the self-censored line "your attorney Fred Gibson's a faggot".

With Marshall's rise to stardom, new disputes arose between him and his wife, centered around Kim's dissatisfaction over the graphic fictional account of Marshall murdering her and dumping her body in a lake in the songs "'97 Bonnie & Clyde" (The Slim Shady LP, 1999) and "Kim" (The Marshall Mathers LP, 2000). The tension between the couple came to a climax when Marshall witnessed Kim kissing another man, one John Guerrera, outside the Hot Rocks Café in Warren on June 4, 2000. Highly disgruntled, Marshall threatened John with an unloaded 9 mm semi-automatic gun and allegedly proceeded to pistol-whip him.[6] Guerrera is mentioned in "Sing For The Moment" on The Eminem Show, with the exact lyric being "you're full of shit too, Guerrera, that was a fist that hit you!" On the previous day, Marshall was allegedly involved in a heated dispute in Royal Oak, Michigan with Douglas Dail, an associate of the rap group Insane Clown Posse, with whom Marshall had an ongoing rivalry. On The Marshall Mathers LP, on the track "Marshall Mathers," Eminem calls ICP's Shaggy 2 Dope and Violent Jay "Faggot 2 Dope," and "Silent Gay." Furthermore, the Ken Kaniff skit on this album features the character (played by Eminem) being fellated by the ICP pair. During the confrontation, Marshall was observed to be holding a gun, which he kept pointed at the ground.[7] Being taken into police custody during the Hot Rocks Café incident, Marshall was charged with misdemeanor charges of brandishing a firearm in public, assault with a dangerous weapon, and two counts of concealed weapon possession, in two separate trials for the two incidents. After a plea bargain in the John Guerrera case, which concluded on April 10, 2001, Marshall pleaded guilty to weapon possession in exchange for the assault charges being dropped, receiving two years of probation,[8] and was ordered to pay $100,000 in damages at the conclusion of the case evaluation in 2002.[9] In the Dail case, he pleaded nolo contendere to the charges of firearm possession and brandishing, receiving one year of probation, enforced concurrently with the sentence from the first case.[10] He would later recount the former incident in the song "Soldier" (The Eminem Show, 2002) and the preceding interlude "The Kiss".

While the trials were in the beginning stages, things were only getting worse for Marshall, when on July 7, 2000, Kim attempted suicide in the couple's Sterling Heights, Michigan home by cutting her wrists. Marshall talks about this incident from Hailie's point of view in the song "When I'm Gone" from the CD Curtain Call: The Hits.[11] This prompted Marshall to file for divorce a few months later,[12] which was promptly countered by Kim with a lawsuit that sought to deny Marshall custody of their daughter and $10 million in defamation damages.[13] Within weeks, however, they settled the lawsuit, and agreed to joint custody of their daughter, with Kim gaining physical custody of Hailie, granting Marshall "liberal visitation rights".[14] By the end of the year, the couple reconciled, agreeing to dismiss divorce claims and live together.[15] Marshall mentions [Kim's] suicide attempt and the Hot Rocks Café incident on the Xzibit song "Don't Approach Me" (Restless, 2000), expressing anger and frustration with the media's constant prying into his life, and with public attention towards him in general.

The reconciliation, however, would not last, as Kim filed for divorce in 2001, which was finalized in October of that year, granting joint physical and legal custody of Hailie to both parties, as well as requiring Marshall to make child support payments.[16] There was further turbulence in their relationship when Kim was sentenced to 2 years of probation for felony cocaine possession in 2003. This was not her first such incident, as she had previously faced similar charges in 2001, although they were eventually dropped.[17] The incident was not to be her last, however, as she was sentenced to 30 days in jail in 2004, after failing a drug test for cocaine while still on probation.[18] Marshall makes numerous references to Kim's cocaine use on the Encore album, including the quotes "you're a fucking cokehead slut" and "mama developed a habit" in the songs "Puke" and "Mockingbird" respectively. Their relationship since their divorce was subject to many contradictive rumors and statements in Marshall's music and remained in an indecisive "on-again, off-again" state for a long time.


The aftermath
Mathers was no stranger to drugs and alcohol, as suggested by a large number of his songs, including "Drug Ballad" (The Marshall Mathers LP, 2000) and "These Drugs" (Devil's Night Bonus Disc, 2001), which are dedicated to his drug use in their entirety. The song "I'm Shady" (The Slim Shady LP, 1999) even includes the explanatory line "well, I do take pills (ecstasy or prescription drugs), don't do speed / don't do crack, don't do coke / I do smoke weed / don't do smack / I do do shrooms, do drink beer / I just wanna make a few things clear". Later tracks, including the aforementioned "These Drugs" and "Kill You" (The Marshall Mathers LP, 2000) additionally suggest cocaine use, although he has never been in a law enforcement incident involving drugs. However, with the sentence of two years of probation taking effect in 2001, during which he was subject to mandatory regular drug testing, his recreational drug use was put to an end. This fact is supported with references to his drug use in his music, which all but disappeared after 2001, and comments by band mate Proof, who states that Marshall "sobered up".[19] However, with rising pressures and workload in his professional career, Marshall found it difficult to get the rest he wanted, and turned to Ambien sleeping pills for relief. His use of the drug eventually became so severe, that in August 2005, he cancelled the European leg of his ongoing tour, and checked into a drug rehabilitation clinic for treatment.

The decline of Marshall's drug use during his probation was in line with the growing demands for responsibility in his role as a parent to Hailie. In addition, he is also known to take care of the daughter of Kim's twin sister Dawn, Alaina "Laney", whom he mentions in the song "Mockingbird" (Encore, 2004), referring to himself as her "daddy" and stating "it's almost like [Laney and Hailie] are sisters now". He also cares for his younger half-brother Nathan, who makes appearances in the music videos for "The Way I Am" (The Marshall Mathers LP, 2000) and "Without Me" (The Eminem Show, 2002). Marshall currently resides with the aforementioned members of his extended family in Clinton Charter Township, Michigan in the outskirts of Detroit.


Remarriage and Second Divorce
Eminem remarried Kim on January 14, 2006 in Michigan. Eminem's best man was long time friend and D12 member Proof, while Kim's maid of honor was their daughter Hailie. They walked down the aisle to Eminem's song "Mockingbird" which was a tribute to Hailie and his niece Alaina. Guests at the wedding were 50 Cent and his G-Unit crew, as well as D12. Kim's mother attended the wedding while Eminem's mother did not. However, less than 11 weeks after remarrying Kim, Eminem filed for divorce at the Macomb County clerk's office.[20], citing "a breakdown in the marriage relationship". On April 5, 2006, the news was leaked to the Detroit Free Press and MTV's Total Request Live.


Early career
Interested in rap from a young age, Mathers began performing as early as thirteen, later gaining some popularity with a group, Soul Intent. In 1996, he released his first independent album, named Infinite (of which he sold about 500 copies out of the back of his car.) The album received no airplay and a mixed critical response, with people claiming Eminem's rapping style sounded too similar to Nas and AZ. Drawing on the negative experiences of his life, in 1997 Eminem followed Infinite up with The Slim Shady EP demo, which saw his lyrics take a decidedly darker turn, in songs like "No One's Iller" and "Murder Murder," the latter in which he talks about having to commit crimes to feed his daughter. He became famous in the hip-hop underground because of his distinctive, cartoonish style and the fact that he was white in a predominantly black genre. Fellow rapper Snoop Dogg referred to him as rap's "great white American hope" in the song "Bitch Please II".

It is said that rap artist and producer Dr. Dre found Eminem's demo on the garage floor of Jimmy Iovine, the Interscope label chief. Though this did not directly lead to a recording contract, Dr. Dre agreed to sign him when Eminem won second place versus MC Juice at the 1997 Rap Olympics freestyle battle (although confusingly the rapper Otherwize is credited with this victory on some websites). Other sources state that an executive at the offices of Interscope handed the demo to Iovine who passed it to Dre, which resulted in a contract.



[ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]

[Sina.G]

Curtis James Jackson III grew up in the South Side of Jamaica, Queens, New York in poverty-stricken circumstances. When he was eight years old, his mother was murdered in her home in a drug deal, and 50 Cent moved in with his grandparents. He soon became immersed in the drug trade, hustling around his native neighborhood by the name of "Boo Boo." Later he was shot at 9 times (3 hit) and stabbed. By embracing that reputation, 50 Cent built a large following in New York before ever signing a major record deal. This was exemplified in 1995, when he featured in the video for 'Incarcerated Scarfaces' by Raekwon of the Wu-Tang Clan.

50 Cent met up with Jam Master Jay of Run-DMC and was signed to his label to write all of his music. After leaving Jam Master Jay, he teamed up with the hip-hop production duo Track Masters. 50 Cent was signed to Columbia Records in 1999. The controversial single "How to Rob", an ode to robbing a slew of industry rappers, was a hit on the radio. The next single, "Ghetto Qu'ran", started a feud with the drug kingpin Kenneth "Supreme" McGriff who was the leader of the New York gang called the "Supreme Team." In the song he says, "'Preme was the Business man and Prince (Supreme's cousin) was the killer." His debut album Power of the Dollar was shelved, and subsequently 50 Cent left Columbia Records shortly after being shot on May 24, 2000.

Eminem first heard 50 Cent on one of his mixtapes, which he brought to Dr. Dre's attention. Eminem expressed interest in the rapper on MTV. After numerous negotiations with various record labels[citation needed], 50 Cent officially signed to Interscope Records. The rapper was also the first to sign onto a joint effort between Eminem's Shady Records and Dr. Dre's Aftermath Entertainment. Interscope marketed 50 Cent as the "real deal", and his appearance on the 8 Mile Soundtrack ("Wanksta") immediately went into heavy rotation on BET, MTV, and radio stations across the country.


Technique
50 Cent's "style" as an emcee can be separated into two parts: before he was shot and following. Before 50 was shot, on his first album "Power of a Dollar," his pronunciation and delivery are sharper and more flexible than they are currently. During this period his delivery mirrored many other New York rappers of the time. As a result of the shooting however, a bullet fragment became lodged in his tongue (where it remains to this day), audibly impairing his speech.

Because of the injury it has become difficult for 50 to verbalize as he once did without slurring. As a result, 50 Cent has modified his delivery to include more harmony (something he dabbled in for previous songs, i.e. "Life On The Line"). He also uses a slower cadence, while emphasizing explosive "P" and "B" sounds for impact. Ironically, it is this attention to harmony that some argue has helped gain him mainstream success.


The popularity of G-Unit
In its first week of release, his debut "Get Rich Or Die Tryin'" sold 872,000 copies[1]. The album was certified gold in its first week and platinum the next, and it broke the record for first week sales of any major label debut in the entire Soundscan era. On April 12, 2004 "Get Rich or Die Tryin'" was certified six times platinum by the RIAA.

In 2003, 50 Cent and other members of G-Unit released their first mixtape, with DJ Whoo Kid. The mixtape featured remixes to songs released already, as well as multiple underground/unreleased tracks. Rapper, Snoop Dogg was featured on many of the tracks, as well as on the cover art work. Since the first one has been released, G-Unit artists have realesed 20 other mixtapes with DJ Whoo Kid.

Interscope then granted 50 Cent his own label, G-Unit Records. 50 Cent appointed his manager Sha Money XL as the president. [2] The label signed on Lloyd Banks, Tony Yayo and Young Buck as the established members of G-Unit. In 2004, Dr. Dre and 50 Cent had signed The Game under a joint venture. 50 Cent also signed Olivia and Mobb Deep to G-Unit Records in 2005. [3] [4]. The rapper is planning on signing Spider Loc, M.O.P., and Mase, from Bad Boy Records. [5] 50 Cent has expressed interest in working with other rappers outside of G-Unit such as Freeway of Roc-A-Fella Records. [6]

In 2005, 50 Cent released his sophomore album, The Massacre. It was originally entitled St. Valentine's Day Massacre, but the title changed when the album release date was set back. He scored a hit with the album's first two singles, "Disco Inferno" and "Candy Shop". The third single, "Just A Lil' Bit" peaked at #3 on the Billboard Hot 100.


Endorsements
After the release of Beg For Mercy from his group G-Unit, he teamed up with Reebok to release his own G-Unit Sneakers. He also invested in VitaminWater bottled water and his own clothing line. 50 Cent appeared on an episode of The Simpsons entitled, "Pranksta Rap" in February 2005.

A video game starring 50 Cent, called "50 Cent: Bulletproof," is available on the PlayStation 2, the Xbox, and the PlayStation Portable.

50 Cent starred in the semi-autobiographical 2005 film Get Rich or Die Tryin' directed by Jim Sheridan, and co-starring Joy Bryant and Terrence Howard.

50 Cent released a memoir about his life up to his success entitled From Pieces to Weight: Once Upon a Time in Southside Queens; the book was released on August 9, 2005. There are other books planned for release in 2007.


Controversy

Ja Rule and Murder Inc. Records
Before even signing to Eminem and Dr. Dre's label, 50 Cent was engaged in a well-publicized dispute with rival rapper Ja Rule and his label Murder Inc. Records. The rappers engaged in numerous mix tape "disses," but have since ended the conflict. The conflict stemmed from the rapper's alleged robbery of Ja Rule's jewelry, which led to a confrontation and 50 Cent's stabbing.

Before the release of Get Rich Or Die Tryin, Murder, Inc alongside The Source began a smear campaign against the rapper. A restraining order document was floating around the Internet stating that 50 Cent had placed label CEO Irv Gotti and rapper Black Child in the document forging a belief that 50 Cent is a "snitch" or a police informant. Although 50 Cent dismissed the claims of not talking to police, the bad publicity continues to be a tool used by various rappers who have rivalries with G-Unit.

This was one of the most well known feuds in hip-hop history. 50 Cent accused Ja Rule of "singing" instead of rapping. Ja Rule retaliated, accusing him of insulting other rappers to gain fame. Ja Rule eventually tried to squash the beef with 50 Cent by using Louis Farrakhan in a televised interview. Ja Rule soon lost credibility when the interview was done a day before his album Blood In My Eye was released, leading 50 Cent to dismiss the interview as a blatant publicity stunt. 50 Cent had not commented much on Ja Rule's and Irv Gotti's situation. The FBI is probing Murder Inc.'s ties to drug-kingpin Kenneth "Supreme" McGriff who is possibly involved in the murder of Jam Master Jay. [7]

According to website The Smoking Gun a 2003 search warrant affidavit for the Manhattan offices of the Murder, Inc. record label showed that McGriff was still trying to kill 50 Cent and that he "communicates with Murder, Inc. employees concerning the target." An excerpt of the affidavit reads:

"The investigation has uncovered a conspiracy involving McGriff and others to murder a rap artist who has released songs containing lyrics regarding McGriff's criminal activities. The rap artist was shot in 2000, survived and there after refused to cooperate with law enforcement regarding the shooting. Messages transmitted over the Murder Inc. Pager indicate that McGriff is involved in an ongoing plot to kill this rap artist, and that he communicates with Murder Inc. employees concerning the target." [8]


New York rappers
50 Cent also has a rivalry with Shyne, Nas, Joe Budden, Fat Joe, Jadakiss and D-Block. He claimed that Nas had made disparaging comments about him and his G-Unit camp while performing at a New York concert. The rapper has denounced Nas as a traitor over the allying himself with Ja Rule and Irv Gotti. 50 Cent points out that Jadakiss and Fat Joe had painted a target on themselves for partnering up with Ja Rule while filming a video in which the rapper took shots at him. He recorded the track "Piggy Bank" and attacked Jadakiss and Fat Joe for their association with Ja Rule. Shyne was named as an enemy of 50 Cent. Shyne had Irv Gotti produce his album, and 50 Cent also attacked him for this association. Even though things cooled down, at 2005 MTV Video Music Awards, Fat Joe made a disparaging comment about G-Unit during a performance. 50 Cent and G-Unit retaliated on set by shouting obscenities toward Fat Joe and Terror Squad.

50 Cent has a long-standing dispute with former friends Bang 'Em Smurf and Domination over internal conflicts. On the song "Love Me" off the 8 Mile soundtrack, 50 Cent criticized Lil' Kim for having breast implants and discusses why he refused her request to be in a video clip for her single "Magic Stick", which he refused to record with her, citing that the song was originally entitled to Miami rapper Trina.

50 Cent also had a feud with Jay-Z over 50 Cent's mention of him on "How to Rob" and Jay-Z responded with a line in his song "It's Hot". 50 Cent responded with "Be a Gentleman." The track was never heard by many due to the rapper's departure from Columbia Records. 50 Cent and Jay-Z eventually settled their "beef".


The Game

The Game giving 50 Cent a kiss at a time when they were trying to end the feud.
50 Cent currently has an escalating feud with The Game. The Game, who was previously signed to G-Unit, was booted by 50 Cent. Fans mostly believed that 50 Cent and The Game were bonding at the time of The Documentary's release. The Game's major debut album was surrounded by controversy. Right after its release, 50 Cent felt that the rapper was disloyal for saying he wanted to work with artists G-Unit were feuding with and he formally dismissed the rapper.

50 Cent also claimed that he was not getting proper credit for the debut of the album. During that dispute, a member of The Game's entourage was shot after a confrontation outside the Hot 97 radio station. As the situation escalated, 50 Cent and The Game decided to hold a press conference to announce their reconciliation. Many fans felt that the supposed feud, and particularly the incident at the radio station was a publicity stunt designed to boost the sales of the two albums the pair had just released. Nevertheless, even after the situation had apparently deflated, 50 Cent and G-Unit continued to feud with The Game, denouncing his street credibility in the media and claiming that without their support, he will not score a hit from his second album. The Game during a performance at the Summer Jam launched a boycott called "G-Unot".

After the performance at Summer Jam, The Game responded with a rough song "300 Bars And Runnin'" which directly addresses 50 Cent and G-Unit. 50 Cent has mixed feelings towards the insulting record, but nevertheless responded through his "Piggybank" video, which features The Game dressed as a Mr. Potato Head and parodies many other rivals. After numerous songs aimed at G-Unit, 50 Cent had responded to the The Game's rebuttals with an insulting song titled "Not Rich, Still Lyin.'" The song imitates The Game and attacks his credibility and his recent feud with his brother, Big Fase 100. This was the first of many feuds where two rappers from the same label were involved against each other.


Other controversies
The moniker "50 Cent" originally belonged to Brooklyn drug dealer Kelvin Martin. Martin managed to claim his success through the robbery and murder of local officials. Well enough, at least, for Curtis Jackson to take on the name and adopt the legacy. The documentary Infamous Times: The Original 50 Cent the infamous gangster was released on DVD. After the dispute with The Game escalated, 50 Cent sued The Game's manager Jimmy "Henchmen" Rosemond over unauthorized filming for a documentary about Kelvin Martin. The family of Martin do not endorse the rapper.

While appearing at the Summer Jam XI concert in New York, 50 Cent and members of G-Unit were criticized for speaking out against other notable artists including R&B singer R. Kelly. Before going onstage, 50 Cent mentioned R. Kelly's pending child pornography trial. He and his crew received mixed reactions from the crowd and chairs were thrown onstage, forcing 50 Cent and his G-Unit crew to leave the stage for safety reasons.

The rapper also had a falling out with Eminem's former deejay Green Lantern. The deejay has been labeled a "snitch" and "traitor" for his apparent phone conversation with rival Jadakiss. The rapper had a phone interview with DJ Green Lantern over the feud with 50 Cent. The DJ was apparently encouraging Jadakiss to "deliver a major blow" to 50 Cent, which he did with the release of "Sorry Ms. Jackson, and Checkmate". The rapper never confronted the DJ about the situation, but it did affect the relationship within the Shady Records. The situation forced Green Lantern to leave Shady Records and other ventures associated with Eminem.

On a taping of The O'Reilly Factor, conservative commentator Bill O'Reilly has urged boycotts against rap music. O'Reilly named 50 Cent as a target of his crusade to prevent rappers who promote bad behavior from endorsing mainstream merchandise. He criticized shoe maker Reebok for partnering up with 50 Cent to endorse his G-Unit Sneakers. O'Reilly has rallied another boycott, this time against the shoe maker. Despite the boycott, sales remain excellent, and Reebok still continues to endorse 50 Cent's products. However, a television advertisement for Reebok which featured 50 Cent was recently taken off air in the United Kingdom. The advertisement contained lyrics from one of 50's tracks, which resulted in complaints against their violent imagery of life.

Dan McTeague, a member of Canadian Parliament suggested that the government ban 50 Cent from entering the country. McTeague said the rapper's message was inappropriate at a time when its largest city Toronto was experiencing a huge increase in gun violence. [9] 50 Cent's Canadian tour went on as planned [10].


[ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]

[r_azary]

biography of hafez
very little credible information is know about Hafiz's life, particularly its early part. Immediately after his death, many stories, some of mythical proportions were woven around his life. The following is an attempt at encapsulating what we know with a fair amount of certainty about Hafiz's life.

Birth
Date:Sometime between the years 1310-1325 a.d. or 712-727 A.H. The most probable date is either 1320, or 1325 a.d.

Place:Shiraz, in South-central Iran

NameShamseddin Mohammad

Family
Pen-NameHafiz or Hafez (a title given to those who had memorized the Koran by heart. It is claimed that Hafiz had done this in fourteen different ways).

Full TitleKhajeh Shamseddin Mohammad Hafiz-s Shirazi
Other variations of spelling are:
Khwajeh Shams al-Din Muhammad Hafez-e Shirazi,
or Khwaje Shams ud-Din Mohammed Hafiz-e Shirazi

Father:Baha-ud-Din

Brothers:He had two older brothers

Wife:Hafiz married in his twenties, even though he continued his love for Shakh-e Nabat, as the manifest symbol of her Creator's beauty.

Children:Hafiz had one child.

Important Events
TeensHe had memorized the Koran by listening to his father's recitations of it. He also had memorized many of the works of his hero, Saadi, as wells as Attar, Rumi and Nizami.

TeensHis father who was a coal merchant died, leaving him and his mother with much debt. Hafiz and his mother went to live with his uncle (also called Saadi). He left day school to work in a drapery shop and later in a bakery.

Age 21
(1341 ad)While still working at the bakery, Hafiz delivered bread to a wealthy quarter of town and saw Shakh-e Nabat, a young woman of incredible beauty. Many of his poems are addressed to Shakh-e Nabat.

Age 21
In pursuit of reaching his beloved, Hafiz kept a forty day and night vigil at the tomb of Baba Kuhi. After successfully attaining this, he met Attar and became his disciple.

Early twenties to early thirtiesBecame a poet of the court of Abu Ishak. Gained much fame and influence in Shiraz. This was the phase of "Spiritual Romanticism" in his poetry.

[r_azary]

Age 33
Mubariz Muzaffar captured Shiraz, and among his various deeds, he ousted Hafiz from his position of teacher of Koranic studies at the college. At this time he wrote protest poems.

Age 38
Shah Shuja took his tyrant father as prisoner, and re-instated Hafiz as a teacher at the college. He began his phase of subtle spirituality in his poetry.

Early fortiesFalling out of favor with Shah Shuja.

Age 48
Hafiz fled Shiraz for his safety, and went into self-imposed exile in Isfahan. His poems mainly talk of his longing for Shiraz, for Shakh-e Nabat, and for his spiritual Master, Attar (not the famous Farid-uddin Attar of Neishabour - who predates Hafiz by a couple of centuries - but the lesser known Attar of Shiraz).

Age 52
By invitation of Shah Shuja, he ended his exile and returned to Shiraz. He was re-instated to his post at the College.

Age 60
Longing to be united with his Creator, he began a forty day and night vigil by sitting in a circle that he had drawn himself.

Age 60
On the morn of the fortieth day of his vigil, which was also on the fortieth anniversary of meeting his Master Attar, he went to his Master, and upon drinking a cup of wine that Attar gave him, he attained Cosmic Consciousness or God-Realization.

Sixties
In this phase, up to the age of 69 when he died, he composed more than half of his ghazals., and continued to teach his small circle of disciples. His poetry at this time, talk with the authority of a Master who is united with God.

Poetry
Divan-e-Hafiz
Some 500 ghazals, 42 Rubaiyees, and a few Ghaseedeh's, composed over a period of 50 years. Hafiz only composed when he was divinely inspired, and therefore he averaged only about 10 Ghazals per year. His focus was to write poetry worthy of the Beloved.

Compiler of Divan
Hafiz did not compile his poetry. Mohammad Golandaam, who also wrote a preface to his compilation, completed it in 813 A.H or 1410 a.d, some 21-22 years after Hafiz's death.

Also another person who compiled Hafiz's poetry was one of his young disciples Sayyid Kasim-e Anvar, who collected 569 Ghazals attributed to Hafiz. He died in 1431 a.d. some 42-43 years after Hafiz's death.

Death
Date:Late 1388 or early 1389 a.d. or 791 A.H. at the age of 69.
Place:Shiraz
Tomb:in Musalla Gardens, along the banks of Ruknabad river in Shiraz, which is referred to as Hafezieh.

Controversy:
The orthodox clergy who always opposed Hafiz, refused to allow him to have a Muslim burial. Yet his grass-roots support among the people of Shiraz created an atmosphere of conflict.

The Oracle:
To resolve the controversy, they decided to use Hafiz's poetry, by dividing his ghazals into couplets, and asking a young boy to draw a couplet. It was agreed that however the couplet directed them, they would all consent to follow.

The couplet that was chosen was verse 7 of Ghazal #79, which was a tongue-in-cheek response from Hafiz to the orthodox clergy. It reads:

Neither Hafiz’s corps, nor his life negate,
With all his misdeeds, heavens for him wait.

To this day, Hafiz's Divan (Poetry) is utilized as an Oracle to give guidance to our questions, and direction to realize our wishes.

After His Death
What others say about Hafiz: Goethe: In his poetry Hafiz has inscribed undeniable truth indelibly ... Hafiz has no peer!

Emerson: Hafiz defies you to show him or put him in a condition inopportune or ignoble ... He fears nothing. He sees too far; he sees throughout; such is the only man I wish to see or be.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: ...You may remember the old Persian saying, 'There is danger for him who taketh the tiger cub, and danger also for whosoever snatches a delusion from a woman.' There is as much sense in Hafiz as in Horace, and as much knowledge of the world.

Edward Fitzgerald: The best musician of Words.

Gertrude Bell: It is as if his mental eye; endowed with wonderful acuteness of vision, had penetrated into those provinces of thought which we of a later age were destined to inhabit.

A. J. Arberry: ... Hafiz is as highly esteemed by his countrymen as Shakespeare by us, and deserves as serious consideration.

References: References for Hafiz's biographical information are taken from:

Hafiz - Tongue of the Hidden, Versions by Paul Smith
The Green Sea of Heaven - Fifty Ghazals from Diwan of Hafiz, Translated by Elizabeth T. Gray, Jr.
Odes of Hafiz - Poetical Horoscope, Translated from the Persian by Abbas Aryanpur Kashani, LL.D.
The Hafez Poems of Gertrude Bell, Introduction by E. Denison Ross
Divan-e Khajeh Shamseddin Mohammad Hafiz-e Shirazi, by Mohammad Ghazvini and Dr. Ghasem Ghani (in Persian)
Divan-e Hafiz-e Shirazi, by Dr. Seyyed Mohammad Reza Jalaly Nayeenii (in Persian)
Divan-e Khajeh Shamseddin Mohammad Hafiz-e Shirazi, compiled by Mohammad Jaafar Mahjoobi (in Persian)

[r_azary]

saddi

byname of MUSHARRIF OD-DIN MUSLIH OD-DIN, Persian poet, one of the greatest figures in classical Persian literature. He lost his father, Mosleh od-Din, in early childhood; later he was sent to study in Baghdad at the renowned Nezamiyeh College, where he acquired the traditional learning of Islam. The unsettled conditions following the Mongol invasion of Persia led him to wander abroad through Anatolia, Syria, Egypt, and Iraq. He refers in his work to travels in India and Central Asia, but these cannot be confirmed. In North Africa he was held captive by the Franks and put to work in the trenches of the fortress of Tripoli. When he reappeared in his native Shiraz he was an elderly man. He seems to have spent the rest of his life in Shiraz. Sa'di took his nom de plume from the name of the local Atabeg, or prince, Sa'd ibn Zangi. His best known works are the Bustan (1257; The Orchard, 1882) and the Gulistan (1258; The Rose Garden, 1964). The Bustan is entirely in
verse (epic metre) and consists of stories aptly illustrating the standard virtues recommended to Muslims (justice, liberality, modesty, contentment) as well as of reflections on the behaviour of dervishes and their ecstatic practices. The Gulistan is mainly in prose and contains stories and personal anecdotes. The text is interspersed with a variety of short poems, containing aphorisms, advice, and humorous reflections. The morals preached in the Gulistan border on expediency--e.g., a well-intended lie is admitted to be preferable to a seditious truth. Sa'di demonstrates a profound awareness of the absurdity of human existence. The fate of those who depend on the changeable moods of kings is contrasted with the freedom of the dervishes. For Western students the Bustan and Gulistan have a special attraction; but Sa'di is also remembered as a great panegyrist and lyricist, the author of a number of masterly general odes portraying human experience, and also of particular
odes such as the lament on the fall of Baghdad after the Mongol invasion in 1258. His lyrics are to be found in Ghazaliyat ("Lyrics") and his odes in Qasa'id ("Odes"). He is also known for a number of works in Arabic. The peculiar blend of human kindness and cynicism, humour, and resignation displayed in Sa'di's works, together with a tendency to avoid the hard dilemma, make him, to many, the most typical and lovable writer in the world of Iranian culture.

[khaiyam]

Newton, Sir Isaac (1642-1727), English physicist, mathematician, and natural philosopher, considered one of the most important scientists of all time. Newton formulated laws of universal gravitation and motion—laws that explain how objects move on Earth as well as through the heavens (see Mechanics). He established the modern study of optics—or the behavior of light—and built the first reflecting telescope. His mathematical insights led him to invent the area of mathematics called calculus (which German mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz also developed independently). Newton stated his ideas in several published works, two of which, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, 1687) and Opticks (1704), are considered among the greatest scientific works ever produced. Newton’s revolutionary contributions explained the workings of a large part of the physical world in mathematical terms, and they suggested that science may provide explanations for other phenomena as well

Sir Isaac Newton Isaac Newton’s work represents one of the greatest contributions to science ever made by an individual. Most notably, Newton derived the law of universal gravitation, invented the branch of mathematics called calculus, and performed experiments investigating the nature of light and color.Rex Features, Ltd.

Newton took known facts and formed mathematical theories to explain them. He used his mathematical theories to predict the behavior of objects in different circumstances and then compared his predictions with what he observed in experiments. Finally, Newton used his results to check—and if need be, modify—his theories (see Deduction). He was able to unite the explanation of physical properties with the means of prediction. Newton began with the laws of motion and gravitation he observed in nature, then used these laws to convert physics from a mere science of explanation into a general mathematical system with rules and laws. His experiments explained the phenomena of light and color and anticipated modern developments in light theory. In addition, his invention of calculus gave science one of its most versatile and powerful tools.

[khaiyam]

Einstein, Albert
I INTRODUCTION

Einstein, Albert (1879-1955), German-born American physicist and Nobel laureate, best known as the creator of the special and general theories of relativity and for his bold hypothesis concerning the particle nature of light. He is perhaps the most well-known scientist of the 20th century.

Einstein was born in Ulm on March 14, 1879, and spent his youth in Munich, where his family owned a small shop that manufactured electric machinery. He did not talk until the age of three, but even as a youth he showed a brilliant curiosity about nature and an ability to understand difficult mathematical concepts. At the age of 12 he taught himself Euclidean geometry.

Einstein hated the dull regimentation and unimaginative spirit of school in Munich. When repeated business failure led the family to leave Germany for Milan, Italy, Einstein, who was then 15 years old, used the opportunity to withdraw from the school. He spent a year with his parents in Milan, and when it became clear that he would have to make his own way in the world, he finished secondary school in Aarau, Switzerland, and entered the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich. Einstein did not enjoy the methods of instruction there. He often cut classes and used the time to study physics on his own or to play his beloved violin. He passed his examinations and graduated in 1900 by studying the notes of a classmate. His professors did not think highly of him and would not recommend him for a university position.

For two years Einstein worked as a tutor and substitute teacher. In 1902 he secured a position as an examiner in the Swiss patent office in Bern. In 1903 he married Mileva Marić, who had been his classmate at the polytechnic. They had two sons but eventually divorced. Einstein later remarried.

[amintnt]

Hi. i really don't have much time to read these.thanks

[mohammad.clergyman]

Amin hayaii ( niloofar's husband who is the cinema's actress)

during his education he was active in the theater then he got diploma and he started to act in the center of dramatic art of political-ideological part of (******)

while he was in military service . in 1370 he was an actor in a movie which has directed by
" sorayya Ghasemi"

in the fifteenth fajr international film festival he could be a candidate as an actor in the second role to get the gift of a movie which has called " borade haye korshid"

it took a long period of time for him to be an actor in the first role of cimeas's movies

he was not mainly succeed in his first role in the movie called " sibe sorkhe hava "

he could be succeed brilliantly in a film directed by " siroos alvand"

unfortunately he was not really nice in some movies including " hotel carton " as well as "dasthaye aloode "and "mozahem " they were actullay caused by getting the weak role of those movies

in the year 1381 he was the top of iranian actors . approximately his six movies have shown in tehran's movie theaters . they were "mozahem" ; "mani va neda " ;"moones";"asiri " :"roze zard" as well as
"booye behesht"

his different roles in 1382 and 1383 : he could be famous in this year as he was not in his old performaces's days that
he has succeed to get a gift of hafez from the annual festivel of a magzine named "mahname tasvir"

his fame caused by his performance in these films : " aroose khoshghadam" and "dokhtare irooni " ( in 1382 ) also "koma " and "mehmane maman "( in 1383)

his best and finest action in a film called "zane ziadi" in 23rd fajr international film festival demonstrates that he bacame expert with the passage of the time

he himself as the role of "mohandes baher" could raise the movie named "shame aroosi " again

and he could proved that he was simply able to act in various roles

The topic was merged

[Marichka]

Born: 9 July 1956
Where: Concord, California USA
Awards: 2 Oscars, 3 Emmys, 4 Golden Globes
Height: 6' 1"

Filmography: Complete List

The most likeable star of his generation, Tom Hanks is a throwback to the days when James Stewart and Gary Cooper lorded it over Hollywood. Whether he's playing a 35-year-old kid, a simpleton from Alabama, a sullen soldier, a mobster hitman or even a lawyer suffering from AIDS, people react well to him - he possesses an all-too-rare nice-guy charm. He's willing to put that charm to the test, too. In Cast Away, for well over an hour, we saw nothing but Hanks - no pretty love interest, no wisecracking sidekick, not even a comedy dog. And, such is the weight Hanks carries with a worldwide audience, such is the skill he has developed over two decades plying his trade, he pulled it off. Cast Away was another huge hit, his 11th in nine years. And more was to come. Only Tom Cruise can match him as the biggest box-office draw of them all.

Thomas J. Hanks was born on July 9th, 1956, in Concord, California, a direct descendant of an uncle of Nancy Hanks, the mother of Abraham Lincoln. His parents split when he was young, the details of their divorce making them "pioneers in the development of marriage dissolution in California". Tom and his two older siblings, Sandra and Larry, went with their father, Amos, a chef. A younger brother, Jim, stayed with mother Janet (Jim would later appear in several of Tom's productions, including acting as his running double in Forrest Gump). Dad's work enforced a nomadic existence upon them, with the kids shifted from school to school, never able to form lasting friendships, making Hanks painfully shy. It didn't help that Amos was married twice after Janet, Tom explaining that, by the age of 10, he'd had "three mothers, five grammar schools and ten houses".

Eventually, in 1966, Amos settled in Oakland, where Tom had to get used to a new mother and new siblings. Here he attended both junior high and Skyline High School, where he indulged his early interests in space and baseball, excelled at soccer and on the track and "became the loud one" - a trick he'd learned when trying to get attention in a succession of new schools.

[ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]

[Marichka]

Birth name
Kevin Spacey Fowler
Height
5' 11" (1.80 m)
Mini biography

As enigmatic as he is talented, Kevin Spacey has always kept the details of his private life closely guarded. As he explained in a 1998 interview with the London Evening Standard, "It's not that I want to create some bullshit mystique by maintaining a silence about my personal life, it is just that the less you know about me, the easier it is to convince you that I am that character on screen. It allows an audience to come into a movie theatre and believe I am that person."
There are, however, certain biographical facts to be had--for starters, Kevin Spacey Fowler was the youngest of three children born to Thomas and Kathleen Fowler in South Orange, New Jersey. His mother was a personal secretary, his father a technical writer whose irregular job prospects led the family all over the country. They eventually settled in southern California, where young Kevin developed into quite a little hellion--after he set his sister's tree house on fire, he was shipped off to the Northridge Military Academy, only to be thrown out a few months later for pinging a classmate on the head with a tire. Spacey then found his way to Chatsworth High School in the San Fernando Valley, where he managed to channel his dramatic tendencies into a successful amateur acting career. In his senior year, he played Captain von Trapp opposite classmate Mare Winningham's Maria in _The Sound of Music_ (the pair later graduated as co-valedictorians). Spacey claims that his interest in acting--and his nearly encyclopedic accumulation of film knowledge--began at an early age, when he would sneak downstairs to watch the late late show on TV. Later, in high school, he and his friends cut class to catch revival films at the NuArt Theater. The adolescent Spacey worked up celebrity impersonations (Jimmy Stewart and Johnny Carson were two of his favorites) to try out on the amateur comedy club circuit.
He briefly attended Los Angeles Valley College, then left (on the advice of another Chatsworth classmate, Val Kilmer) to join the drama program at Juilliard. After two years of training he was anxious to work, so he quit Juilliard sans diploma and signed up with the New York Shakespeare Festival. His first professional stage appearance was as a messenger in the 1981 production of 'Henry VI'.
Festival head Joseph Papp ushered the young actor out into the "real world" of theater, and the next year Spacey made his Broadway debut in Henrik Ibsen's 'Ghosts'. He quickly proved himself as an energetic and versatile performer (at one point, he rotated through all the parts in David Rabe's 'Hurlyburly'). In 1986 he had the chance to work with his idol and future mentor, Jack Lemmon, on a production of Eugene O'Neill's 'Long Day's Journey Into Night'. While his interest soon turned to film, Spacey would remain active in the theater community--in 1991, he won a Tony Award for his turn as Uncle Louie in Neil Simon's Broadway hit 'Lost in Yonkers', and in 1999 he returned to the boards for a revival of O'Neill's 'The Iceman Cometh'.
Spacey's film career began modestly, with a small part as a subway thief in Heartburn (1986). Deemed more of a "character actor" than a leading man, he stayed on the periphery in his next few films, but attracted attention for his turn as beady-eyed villain Mel Profitt on the TV series "Wiseguy" (1987). Profitt was the first in a long line of dark, manipulative characters that would eventually make Kevin Spacey a household name: he went on to play a sinister office manager in Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), a sadistic Hollywood exec in Swimming with Sharks (1994), and, most famously, creepy, smooth-talking eyewitness Verbal Kint in The Usual Suspects (1995).
The "Suspects" role earned Spacey an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor and catapulted him into the limelight. That same year, he turned in another complex, eerie performance in David Fincher's thriller Se7en (1995) (Spacey refused billing on the film, fearing that it might compromise the ending if audiences were waiting for him to appear). By now, the scripts were pouring in. After appearing in Al Pacino's Looking for Richard (1996), Spacey made his own directorial debut with Albino Alligator (1996), a low-key but well received hostage drama. He then jumped back into acting, winning critical accolades for his turns as flashy detective Jack Vincennes in L.A. Confidential (1997) and genteel, closeted murder suspect Jim Williams in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997). In October 1999, just four days after the dark suburban satire American Beauty (1999) opened in US theaters, Spacey received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Little did organizers know that his role in _Beauty_ would turn out to be his biggest success yet--as Lester Burnham, a middle-aged corporate cog on the brink of psychological meltdown, he tapped into a funny, savage character that captured audiences' imaginations and earned him a Best Actor Oscar.
No longer relegated to offbeat supporting parts, Spacey seems poised to redefine himself as a Hollywood headliner. He says he's finished exploring the dark side--but, given his attraction to complex characters, that mischievous twinkle will never be too far from his eyes.

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[Reza1969]

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William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American entrepreneur, philanthropist, and the chairman of Microsoft, the software company he founded with Paul Allen. During his career at Microsoft he has held the positions of CEO and chief software architect, and he remains the largest individual shareholder with more than 8% of the common stock.[3] Forbes magazine's list of The World's Billionaires has ranked him as the richest person in the world since 1995,[2] and recent estimates put his net worth near $56 billion.[2] When family wealth is considered, his family ranks second behind the Walton family.[4][5]

Gates is one of the best-known entrepreneurs of the personal computer revolution. Although he is widely admired,[6][7] his business tactics have often been criticized as anti-competitive, and have, in some instances, been ruled as such in court.[8][9] Since amassing his fortune, Gates has pursued a number of philanthropic endeavors, donating large amounts of money to various charitable organizations and scientific research programs through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, established in 2000.

Early life

William Henry Gates III was born in Seattle, Washington to William H. Gates, Jr. (now Sr.) and Mary Maxwell Gates. His family was wealthy; his father was a prominent lawyer, his mother served on the board of directors for First Interstate Bank and the United Way, and her father, J. W. Maxwell, was a national bank president. Gates has one older sister, Kristi (Kristianne), and one younger sister, Libby. He was the fourth of his name in his family, but was known as William Gates III or "Trey" because his father had dropped his own "III" suffix.[10] Several writers claim that Maxwell set up a million-dollar trust fund for Gates.[11] A 1993 biographer who interviewed both Gates and his parents (among other sources) found no evidence of this and dismissed it as one of the "fictions" surrounding Gates's fortune.[10] Gates denied the trust fund story in a 1994 interview[12] and indirectly in his 1995 book The Road Ahead.[13]

Gates excelled in elementary school, particularly in mathematics and the sciences. At thirteen he enrolled in the Lakeside School, Seattle's most exclusive preparatory school where tuition in 1967 was $5,000 (Harvard tuition that year was $1,760). When he was in the eighth grade, the school mothers used proceeds from a rummage sale to buy Lakeside an ASR-33 teletype terminal and a block of computer time on a General Electric computer.[10] Gates took an interest in programming the GE system in BASIC and was excused from math classes to pursue his interest. After the Mothers Club donation was exhausted he and other students sought time on other systems, including DEC PDP minicomputers. One of these systems was a PDP-10 belonging to Computer Center Corporation, which banned the Lakeside students for the summer after it caught them exploiting bugs in the operating system to obtain free computer time.

At the end of the ban, the Lakeside students (Gates, Paul Allen, Ric Weiland, and Kent Evans) offered to find bugs in CCC's software in exchange for free computer time. Rather than use the system via teletype, Gates went to CCC's offices and studied source code for various programs that ran on the system, not only in BASIC but FORTRAN, LISP, and machine language as well. The arrangement with CCC continued until 1970, when it went out of business. The following year Information Sciences Inc. hired the Lakeside students to write a payroll program in COBOL, providing them not only computer time but royalties as well. At age 14, Gates also formed a venture with Allen, called Traf-O-Data, to make traffic counters based on the Intel 8008 processor. That first year he made $20,000, however when his age was discovered business slowed.[14][15]

As a youth, Bill Gates was active in the Boy Scouts of America where he achieved its second highest rank, Life Scout.

According to a press inquiry, Bill Gates stated that he scored 1590 on his SATs.[16] He enrolled at Harvard University in the fall of 1973 intending to get a pre-law degree,[17] but did not have a definite study plan.[18] While at Harvard, he met his future business partner, Steve Ballmer. At the same time, he co-authored and published a paper on algorithms with computer scientist Christos Papadimitriou.[19]

Microsoft

BASIC

After reading the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics that demonstrated the Altair 8800, Gates contacted MITS (Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems), the creators of the new microcomputer, to inform them that he and others were working on a BASIC interpreter for the platform.[20] In reality, Gates and Allen did not have an Altair and had not written code for it; they merely wanted to gauge MITS's interest. MITS president Ed Roberts agreed to meet them for a demo, and over the course of a few weeks they developed an Altair emulator that ran on a minicomputer, and then the BASIC interpreter. The demonstration, held at MITS's offices in Albuquerque, was a success and resulted in a deal with MITS to distribute the interpreter as Altair BASIC. Paul Allen hired into MITS,[21] and Gates took a leave of absence from Harvard to work with Allen at MITS, dubbing their partnership "Micro-soft" in November 1975.[21] Within a year, the hyphen was dropped, and on November 26, 1976, the tradename "Microsoft" was registered with the USPTO.[21]

Microsoft's BASIC was popular with computer hobbyists, but Gates discovered that a pre-market copy had leaked into the community and was being widely copied and distributed. In February 1976, Gates wrote an Open Letter to Hobbyists in the MITS newsletter saying that MITS could not continue to produce, distribute, and maintain high-quality software without payment.[22] This letter was unpopular with many computer hobbyists, but Gates persisted in his belief that software developers should be able to demand payment. Microsoft became independent of MITS in late 1976, and it continued to develop programming language software for various systems.

According to Gates, people at Microsoft often did more than one job during the early years; whoever answered the phone when an order came in was responsible for packing and mailing it. Gates oversaw the business details, but continued to write code as well. In the first five years, he personally reviewed every line of code the company shipped, and often rewrote parts of it as he saw fit.[23]

IBM partnership

In 1980 IBM approached Microsoft to make the BASIC interpreter for its upcoming personal computer, the IBM PC. When IBM's representatives mentioned that they needed an operating system, Gates referred them to Digital Research (DRI), makers of the widely used CP/M operating system.[24] IBM's discussions with Digital Research went poorly, and they did not reach a licensing agreement. IBM representative Jack Sams mentioned the licensing difficulties during a subsequent meeting with Gates and told him to get an acceptable operating system. A few weeks later Gates proposed using 86-DOS (QDOS), an operating system similar to CP/M that Seattle Computer Products had made for hardware similar to the PC. Microsoft made a deal with SCP to become the exclusive licensing agent, and later the full owner, of 86-DOS, but did not mention that IBM was a potential customer. After adapting the operating system for the PC, Microsoft delivered it to IBM as PC-DOS in exchange for a one-time fee.[25] Gates never understood why DRI had walked away from the deal, and in later years he claimed that DRI founder Gary Kildall capriciously "went flying" during an IBM appointment, a characterization that Kildall and other DRI employees would deny.

As several companies reverse-engineered the IBM architecture and developed clones[26] Microsoft was quick to license DOS to other manufacturers, calling it MS-DOS (for Microsoft Disk Operating System). By marketing MS-DOS aggressively to manufacturers of IBM-PC clones, Microsoft went from a small player to one of the major software vendors in the home computer industry. Microsoft continued to develop operating systems as well as software applications.[27][28]

Windows

In the early 1980s Microsoft introduced its own version of the graphical user interface (GUI), based on ideas pioneered by the Xerox corporation, and further developed by Apple.[29] Microsoft released "Windows" as an addition and alternative to their DOS command line, and to compete with other systems on the market that employed a GUI. By the early 1990s, Windows had pushed other DOS-based GUIs like GEM and GEOS out of the market. The release of Windows 3.0 in 1990 was a tremendous success, selling around 10 million copies in the first two years and cementing Microsoft's dominance in operating systems sales.[30]

By continuing to ensure, by various means, that most computers came with Microsoft software pre-installed, the Microsoft corporation eventually became the largest software company in the world, earning Gates enough money that Forbes Magazine named him the wealthiest person in the world for several years.[31][32] Gates served as the CEO of the company until 2000, when Steve Ballmer took the position.[20] Microsoft has thousands of patents,[33] and Gates has nine patents to his name[citation needed].

Strategy and management

Since Microsoft's founding in 1975 and as of 2006, Gates has had primary responsibility for Microsoft's product strategy. He has aggressively broadened the company's range of products, and wherever Microsoft has achieved a dominant position he has vigorously defended it. Many decisions that have led to antitrust litigation over Microsoft's business practices have had Gates' approval. In the 1998 United States v. Microsoft case, Gates gave deposition testimony that several journalists characterized as evasive. He argued with examiner David Boies over the definitions of words such as: compete, concerned, ask, and we.[34] BusinessWeek reported:

Early rounds of his deposition show him offering obfuscatory answers and saying 'I don't recall' so many times that even the presiding judge had to chuckle. Worse, many of the technology chief's denials and pleas of ignorance were directly refuted by prosecutors with snippets of e-mail Gates both sent and received.[35]

Gates later said that he had simply resisted attempts by Boies to mischaracterize his words and actions. As to his demeanor during the deposition, he said "Whatever that penalty is should be levied against me: rudeness to Boies in the first degree."[36] Despite Gates' denials, the judge ruled that Microsoft had committed monopolization and tying, blocking competition, in violation of the Sherman Act.

As an executive, Gates met regularly with Microsoft's senior managers and program managers. Most firsthand accounts of these meetings portray him as hostile, berating managers for perceived holes in their business strategy or proposals that place the company's long-term interests at risk.[12][37][38] He has been described shouting at length at employees before letting them continue, with such remarks as "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard!" and "Why don't you just give up your options and join the Peace Corps?"[39] However, he was also known to back down when the targets of his outbursts responded frankly and directly.[40] When subordinates appeared to be procrastinating, he was known to quip, "Do you want me to do it over the weekend?"[41][42]

Gates' role at Microsoft for most of its history has been primarily a management and executive role. However, he was an active software developer in the early years, particularly on the company's programming language products. (See also: DONKEY.BAS) He has not officially been on a development team since working on the TRS-80 Model 100 line, but he wrote code as late as 1989 that shipped in the company's products.[41] On June 15, 2006, Gates announced that he would transition out of his day-to-day role over the next two years to dedicate more time to philanthropy. He divided his responsibilities between two successors, placing Ray Ozzie in charge of day-to-day management and Craig Mundie in charge of long-term product strategy.[43][44] One of his last initiatives before announcing his departure was the creation of a robotics software group at Microsoft.

Personal life

Gates married Melinda French of Dallas, Texas on January 1, 1994. They have three children: Jennifer Katharine Gates (1996), Rory John Gates (1999) and Phoebe Adele Gates (2002). Bill Gates' house is one of the most expensive houses in the world, and is a modern 21st century earth-sheltered home in the side of a hill overlooking Lake Washington in Medina, Washington. According to King County public records, as of 2006, the total assessed value of the property (land and house) is $125 million, and the annual property tax is just under $1 million. Also among Gates' private acquisitions is the Codex Leicester, a collection of writings by Leonardo da Vinci, which Gates bought for USD $30.8 million at an auction in 1994.[45]

Gates' e-mail address has been widely publicized, and he received as many as 4,000,000 e-mails in 2004, most of which were spam. He has almost an entire department devoted to filtering out junk emails.[46] Gates says that much of this junk mail "offers to help [him] get out of debt or get rich quick", which "would be funny if it weren't so irritating".[47]

Wealth and investments

Gates has been number one on the "Forbes 400" list from 1993 through to 2006 and number one on Forbes list of "The World's Richest People" from 1995 to 2006 with around 50 billion U.S. dollars. In 1999, Gates's wealth briefly surpassed $100 billion causing him to be referred to in the media as a "centibillionaire".[48] Since 2000 the nominal value of his Microsoft holdings has declined due to a fall in Microsoft's stock price after the dot-com bubble and the multi-billion dollar donations he has made to his charitable foundations. In May 2006, Gates said in an interview that he wished that he were not the richest man in the world, stating that he disliked the attention it brought.[49]

Gates has several investments outside Microsoft. He founded Corbis, a digital imaging company, in 1989. In 2004 he became a director of Berkshire Hathaway, the investment company headed by longtime friend Warren Buffett.[50] He is a client of Cascade Investment Group, a wealth management firm with diverse holdings.

Philanthropy

In 2000, Gates founded the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a charitable organization, with his wife. Bill Gates Sr. has credited David Rockefeller's generosity and extensive philanthropy as an influence on his son. The two of them met several times with him and have modeled their giving in part on the Rockefeller family's philanthropic focus on global problems being ignored by governments and other organizations.[2]

The foundation's grants have provided funds for college scholarships for under-represented minorities, AIDS prevention, diseases prevalent in third world countries, and other causes. In 2000, the Gates Foundation endowed the University of Cambridge with $210 million for the Gates Cambridge Scholarships. The Foundation has also pledged over $7 billion to its various causes, including $1 billion to the United Negro College Fund. According to a 2004 Forbes magazine article, Gates gave away over $29 billion to charities from 2000 onwards. These donations are usually cited as sparking a substantial change in attitudes towards philanthropy among the very rich, with philanthropy becoming the norm.[51]

Public school support

One of Gates' primary interests is improving the public schools. He has donated substantially toward that goal, and also appeared on programs with personalities such as Oprah Winfrey to emphasize the crisis in American education.[citation needed] He has also appeared before Congress for this purpose.[citation needed]

Transition

On June 16, 2006, Gates announced that he would move to a part-time role within Microsoft (leaving day-to-day operations management)[52] in July 2008 to begin a full-time career in philanthropy, but would remain as chairman. Gates credited Warren Buffett with influencing his decision to commit himself to charitable causes.[53] Days later, Buffett announced that he would begin matching Gates' contributions to the Gates Foundation, up to $1.5 billion per year in stock.[54]

Awards and recognition

Time Magazine named Gates one of the 100 people who most influenced the 20th century, as well as one of the 100 most influential people of 2004, 2005, 2006 and again in 2007. Gates and Oprah Winfrey are the only two people to make all four lists. Time also collectively named Gates, his wife Melinda and U2's lead singer Bono as the 2005 Persons of the Year for their humanitarian efforts. In 2006, Gates Foundation was awarded the Premio Príncipe de Asturias en Cooperación Internacional. In a list compiled by the magazine New Statesman in 2006, he was voted eighth in the list of "Heroes of our time".[55] Gates was listed in the Sunday Times power list in 1999, named CEO of the year by Chief Executive Officers magazine in 1994, ranked number one in the "Top 50 Cyber Elite" by Time in 1998, ranked number two in the Upside Elite 100 in 1999 and was included in The Guardian as one of the "Top 100 influential people in media" in 2001.

Gates has received three honorary doctorates, from the Nyenrode Business Universiteit, Breukelen, The Netherlands in 2000,[56] the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden in 2002 and Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan in 2005, and will receive a fourth, in June of 2007, from Harvard University.[57] Gates was also given an honorary KBE (Knighthood) from Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom in 2005,[58] in addition to having entomologists name the Bill Gates flower fly, Eristalis gatesi, in his honor.[59]

Bill delivered the keynote address at the Fall Comdex in 1983, 1985, 1988, 1990, 1994, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, and 2003.

Bill and Melinda received the Prince of Asturias Award for International Cooperation on May 4, 2006, in recognition of their world impact through charity giving.[60] In November 2006, he and his wife were awarded the Order of the Aztec Eagle for their philanthropic work around the world in the areas of health and education, particularly in Mexico, and specifically in the program "Un país de lectores".[61]

Publicity

Gates is often characterized as the quintessential example of a super-intelligent "nerd" with immense power and wealth. This has in turn led to pop culture stereotypes of Gates as a tyrant or evil genius, often resorting to ruthless business techniques. As such he has been the subject of numerous parodies in film, television, and video games.


***


Bill Gates
Chairman, Microsoft Corp.


worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential. Microsoft had revenues of US$44.28 billion for the fiscal year ending June 2006, and employs more than 71,000 people in 103 countries and regions.

On June 15, 2006, Microsoft announced that effective July 2008 Gates will transition out of a day-to-day role in the company to spend more time on his global health and education work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. After July 2008 Gates will continue to serve as Microsoft’s chairman and an advisor on key development projects. The two-year transition process is to ensure that there is a smooth and orderly transfer of Gates’ daily responsibilities. Effective June 2006, Ray Ozzie has assumed Gates’ previous title as chief software architect and is working side by side with Gates on all technical architecture and product oversight responsibilities at Microsoft. Craig Mundie has assumed the new title of chief research and strategy officer at Microsoft and is working closely with Gates to assume his responsibility for the company’s research and incubation efforts.

Born on Oct. 28, 1955, Gates grew up in Seattle with his two sisters. Their father, William H. Gates II, is a Seattle attorney. Their late mother, Mary Gates, was a schoolteacher, University of Washington regent, and chairwoman of United Way International.

Gates attended public elementary school and the private Lakeside School. There, he discovered his interest in software and began programming computers at age 13.

In 1973, Gates entered Harvard University as a freshman, where he lived down the hall from Steve Ballmer, now Microsoft's chief executive officer. While at Harvard, Gates developed a version of the programming language BASIC for the first microcomputer - the MITS Altair.

In his junior year, Gates left Harvard to devote his energies to Microsoft, a company he had begun in 1975 with his childhood friend Paul Allen. Guided by a belief that the computer would be a valuable tool on every office desktop and in every home, they began developing software for personal computers. Gates' foresight and his vision for personal computing have been central to the success of Microsoft and the software industry.

Under Gates' leadership, Microsoft's mission has been to continually advance and improve software technology, and to make it easier, more cost-effective and more enjoyable for people to use computers. The company is committed to a long-term view, reflected in its investment of approximately $6.2 billion on research and development in the 2005 fiscal year.

In 1999, Gates wrote Business @ the Speed of Thought, a book that shows how computer technology can solve business problems in fundamentally new ways. The book was published in 25 languages and is available in more than 60 countries. Business @ the Speed of Thought has received wide critical acclaim, and was listed on the best-seller lists of the New York Times, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal and Amazon.com. Gates' previous book, The Road Ahead, published in 1995, held the No. 1 spot on the New York Times' bestseller list for seven weeks.

Gates has donated the proceeds of both books to non-profit organizations that support the use of technology in education and skills development.

In addition to his love of computers and software, Gates founded Corbis, which is developing one of the world's largest resources of visual information - a comprehensive digital archive of art and photography from public and private collections around the globe. He is also a member of the board of directors of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., which invests in companies engaged in diverse business activities.

Philanthropy is also important to Gates. He and his wife, Melinda, have endowed a foundation with more than $28.8 billion (as of January 2005) to support philanthropic initiatives in the areas of global health and learning, with the hope that in the 21st century, advances in these critical areas will be available for all people. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has committed more than $3.6 billion to organizations working in global health; more than $2 billion to improve learning opportunities, including the Gates Library Initiative to bring computers, Internet Access and training to public libraries in low-income communities in the United States and Canada; more than $477 million to community projects in the Pacific Northwest; and more than $488 million to special projects and annual giving campaigns.

Gates was married on Jan. 1, 1994, to Melinda French Gates. They have three children. Gates is an avid reader, and enjoys playing golf and bridge.

[behnam karami]

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Galileo Galilei's parents were Vincenzo Galilei and Guilia Ammannati. Vincenzo, who was born in Florence in 1520, was a teacher of music and a fine lute player. After studying music in Venice he carried out experiments on strings to support his musical theories. Guilia, who was born in Pescia, married Vincenzo in 1563 and they made their home in the countryside near Pisa. Galileo was their first child and spent his early years with his family in Pisa.

In 1572, when Galileo was eight years old, his family returned to Florence, his father's home town. However, Galileo remained in Pisa and lived for two years with Muzio Tedaldi who was related to Galileo's mother by marriage. When he reached the age of ten, Galileo left Pisa to join his family in Florence and there he was tutored by Jacopo Borghini. Once he was old enough to be educated in a monastery, his parents sent him to the Camaldolese Monastery at Vallombrosa which is situated on a magnificent forested hillside 33 km southeast of Florence. The Camaldolese Order was independent of the Benedictine Order, splitting from it in about 1012. The Order combined the solitary life of the hermit with the strict life of the monk and soon the young Galileo found this life an attractive one. He became a novice, intending to join the Order, but this did not please his father who had already decided that his eldest son should become a medical doctor.

Vincenzo had Galileo return from Vallombrosa to Florence and give up the idea of joining the Camaldolese order. He did continue his schooling in Florence, however, in a school run by the Camaldolese monks. In 1581 Vincenzo sent Galileo back to Pisa to live again with Muzio Tedaldi and now to enrol for a medical degree at the University of Pisa. Although the idea of a medical career never seems to have appealed to Galileo, his father's wish was a fairly natural one since there had been a distinguished physician in his family in the previous century. Galileo never seems to have taken medical studies seriously, attending courses on his real interests which were in mathematics and natural philosophy. His mathematics teacher at Pisa was Filippo Fantoni, who held the chair of mathematics. Galileo returned to Florence for the summer vacations and there continued to study mathematics.

In the year 1582-83 Ostilio Ricci, who was the mathematician of the Tuscan Court and a former pupil of Tartaglia, taught a course on Euclid's Elements at the University of Pisa which Galileo attended. During the summer of 1583 Galileo was back in Florence with his family and Vincenzo encouraged him to read Galen to further his medical studies. However Galileo, still reluctant to study medicine, invited Ricci (also in Florence where the Tuscan court spent the summer and autumn) to his home to meet his father. Ricci tried to persuade Vincenzo to allow his son to study mathematics since this was where his interests lay. Certainly Vincenzo did not like the idea and resisted strongly but eventually he gave way a little and Galileo was able to study the works of Euclid and Archimedes from the Italian translations which Tartaglia had made. Of course he was still officially enrolled as a medical student at Pisa but eventually, by 1585, he gave up this course and left without completing his degree.

Galileo began teaching mathematics, first privately in Florence and then during 1585-86 at Siena where he held a public appointment. During the summer of 1586 he taught at Vallombrosa, and in this year he wrote his first scientific book The little balance [La Balancitta] which described Archimedes' method of finding the specific gravities (that is the relative densities) of substances using a balance. In the following year he travelled to Rome to visit Clavius who was professor of mathematics at the Jesuit Collegio Romano there. A topic which was very popular with the Jesuit mathematicians at this time was centres of gravity and Galileo brought with him some results which he had discovered on this topic. Despite making a very favourable impression on Clavius, Galileo failed to gain an appointment to teach mathematics at the University of Bologna.

After leaving Rome Galileo remained in contact with Clavius by correspondence and Guidobaldo del Monte was also a regular correspondent. Certainly the theorems which Galileo had proved on the centres of gravity of solids, and left in Rome, were discussed in this correspondence. It is also likely that Galileo received lecture notes from courses which had been given at the Collegio Romano, for he made copies of such material which still survive today. The correspondence began around 1588 and continued for many years. Also in 1588 Galileo received a prestigious invitation to lecture on the dimensions and location of hell in Dante's Inferno at the Academy in Florence.

Fantoni left the chair of mathematics at the University of Pisa in 1589 and Galileo was appointed to fill the post (although this was only a nominal position to provide financial support for Galileo). Not only did he receive strong recommendations from Clavius, but he also had acquired an excellent reputation through his lectures at the Florence Academy in the previous year. The young mathematician had rapidly acquired the reputation that was necessary to gain such a position, but there were still higher positions at which he might aim. Galileo spent three years holding this post at the university of Pisa and during this time he wrote De Motu a series of essays on the theory of motion which he never published. It is likely that he never published this material because he was less than satisfied with it, and this is fair for despite containing some important steps forward, it also contained some incorrect ideas. Perhaps the most important new ideas which De Motu contains is that one can test theories by conducting experiments. In particular the work contains his important idea that one could test theories about falling bodies using an inclined plane to slow down the rate of descent.

In 1591 Vincenzo Galilei, Galileo's father, died and since Galileo was the eldest son he had to provide financial support for the rest of the family and in particular have the necessary financial means to provide dowries for his two younger sisters. Being professor of mathematics at Pisa was not well paid, so Galileo looked for a more lucrative post. With strong recommendations from Guidobaldo del Monte, Galileo was appointed professor of mathematics at the University of Padua (the university of the Republic of Venice) in 1592 at a salary of three times what he had received at Pisa. On 7 December 1592 he gave his inaugural lecture and began a period of eighteen years at the university, years which he later described as the happiest of his life. At Padua his duties were mainly to teach Euclid's geometry and standard (geocentric) astronomy to medical students, who would need to know some astronomy in order to make use of astrology in their medical practice. However, Galileo argued against Aristotle's view of astronomy and natural philosophy in three public lectures he gave in connection with the appearance of a New Star (now known as 'Kepler's supernova') in 1604. The belief at this time was that of Aristotle, namely that all changes in the heavens had to occur in the lunar region close to the Earth, the realm of the fixed stars being permanent. Galileo used parallax arguments to prove that the New Star could not be close to the Earth. In a personal letter written to Kepler in 1598, Galileo had stated that he was a Copernican (believer in the theories of Copernicus). However, no public sign of this belief was to appear until many years later.

At Padua, Galileo began a long term relationship with Maria Gamba, who was from Venice, but they did not marry perhaps because Galileo felt his financial situation was not good enough. In 1600 their first child Virginia was born, followed by a second daughter Livia in the following year. In 1606 their son Vincenzo was born.

We mentioned above an error in Galileo's theory of motion as he set it out in De Motu around 1590. He was quite mistaken in his belief that the force acting on a body was the relative difference between its specific gravity and that of the substance through which it moved. Galileo wrote to his friend Paolo Sarpi, a fine mathematician who was consultor to the Venetian government, in 1604 and it is clear from his letter that by this time he had realised his mistake. In fact he had returned to work on the theory of motion in 1602 and over the following two years, through his study of inclined planes and the pendulum, he had formulated the correct law of falling bodies and had worked out that a projectile follows a parabolic path. However, these famous results would not be published for another 35 years.

In May 1609, Galileo received a letter from Paolo Sarpi telling him about a spyglass that a Dutchman had shown in Venice. Galileo wrote in the Starry Messenger (Sidereus Nuncius) in April 1610:-

About ten months ago a report reached my ears that a certain Fleming had constructed a spyglass by means of which visible objects, though very distant from the eye of the observer, were distinctly seen as if nearby. Of this truly remarkable effect several experiences were related, to which some persons believed while other denied them. A few days later the report was confirmed by a letter I received from a Frenchman in Paris, Jacques Badovere, which caused me to apply myself wholeheartedly to investigate means by which I might arrive at the invention of a similar instrument. This I did soon afterwards, my basis being the doctrine of refraction.

From these reports, and using his own technical skills as a mathematician and as a craftsman, Galileo began to make a series of telescopes whose optical performance was much better than that of the Dutch instrument. His first telescope was made from available lenses and gave a magnification of about four times. To improve on this Galileo learned how to grind and polish his own lenses and by August 1609 he had an instrument with a magnification of around eight or nine. Galileo immediately saw the commercial and military applications of his telescope (which he called a perspicillum) for ships at sea. He kept Sarpi informed of his progress and Sarpi arranged a demonstration for the Venetian Senate. They were very impressed and, in return for a large increase in his salary, Galileo gave the sole rights for the manufacture of telescopes to the Venetian Senate. It seems a particularly good move on his part since he must have known that such rights were meaningless, particularly since he always acknowledged that the telescope was not his invention!

By the end of 1609 Galileo had turned his telescope on the night sky and began to make remarkable discoveries. Swerdlow writes (see ]):-

In about two months, December and January, he made more discoveries that changed the world than anyone has ever made before or since.

The astronomical discoveries he made with his telescopes were described in a short book called the Starry Messenger published in Venice in May 1610. This work caused a sensation. Galileo claimed to have seen mountains on the Moon, to have proved the Milky Way was made up of tiny stars, and to have seen four small bodies orbiting Jupiter. These last, with an eye to getting a position in Florence, he quickly named 'the Medicean stars'. He had also sent Cosimo de Medici, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, an excellent telescope for himself.

The Venetian Senate, perhaps realising that the rights to manufacture telescopes that Galileo had given them were worthless, froze his salary. However he had succeeded in impressing Cosimo and, in June 1610, only a month after his famous little book was published, Galileo resigned his post at Padua and became Chief Mathematician at the University of Pisa (without any teaching duties) and 'Mathematician and Philosopher' to the Grand Duke of Tuscany. In 1611 he visited Rome where he was treated as a leading celebrity; the Collegio Romano put on a grand dinner with speeches to honour Galileo's remarkable discoveries. He was also made a member of the Accademia dei Lincei (in fact the sixth member) and this was an honour which was especially important to Galileo who signed himself 'Galileo Galilei Linceo' from this time on.

While in Rome, and after his return to Florence, Galileo continued to make observations with his telescope. Already in the Starry Messenger he had given rough periods of the four moons of Jupiter, but more precise calculations were certainly not easy since it was difficult to identify from an observation which moon was I, which was II, which III, and which IV. He made a long series of observations and was able to give accurate periods by 1612. At one stage in the calculations he became very puzzled since the data he had recorded seemed inconsistent, but he had forgotten to take into account the motion of the Earth round the sun.

Galileo first turned his telescope on Saturn on 25 July 1610 and it appeared as three bodies (his telescope was not good enough to show the rings but made them appear as lobes on either side of the planet). Continued observations were puzzling indeed to Galileo as the bodies on either side of Saturn vanished when the ring system was edge on. Also in 1610 he discovered that, when seen in the telescope, the planet Venus showed phases like those of the Moon, and therefore must orbit the Sun not the Earth. This did not enable one to decide between the Copernican system, in which everything goes round the Sun, and that proposed by Tycho Brahe in which everything but the Earth (and Moon) goes round the Sun which in turn goes round the Earth. Most astronomers of the time in fact favoured Brahe's system and indeed distinguishing between the two by experiment was beyond the instruments of the day. However, Galileo knew that all his discoveries were evidence for Copernicanism, although not a proof. In fact it was his theory of falling bodies which was the most significant in this respect, for opponents of a moving Earth argued that if the Earth rotated and a body was dropped from a tower it should fall behind the tower as the Earth rotated while it fell. Since this was not observed in practice this was taken as strong evidence that the Earth was stationary. However Galileo already knew that a body would fall in the observed manner on a rotating Earth.

Other observations made by Galileo included the observation of sunspots. He reported these in Discourse on floating bodies which he published in 1612 and more fully in Letters on the sunspots which appeared in 1613. In the following year his two daughters entered the Franciscan Convent of St Matthew outside Florence, Virginia taking the name Sister Maria Celeste and Livia the name Sister Arcangela. Since they had been born outside of marriage, Galileo believed that they themselves should never marry. Although Galileo put forward many revolutionary correct theories, he was not correct in all cases. In particular when three comets appeared in 1618 he became involved in a controversy regarding the nature of comets. He argued that they were close to the Earth and caused by optical refraction. A serious consequence of this unfortunate argument was that the Jesuits began to see Galileo as a dangerous opponent.

Despite his private support for Copernicanism, Galileo tried to avoid controversy by not making public statements on the issue. However he was drawn into the controversy through Castelli who had been appointed to the chair of mathematics in Pisa in 1613. Castelli had been a student of Galileo's and he was also a supporter of Copernicus. At a meeting in the Medici palace in Florence in December 1613 with the Grand Duke Cosimo II and his mother the Grand Duchess Christina of Lorraine, Castelli was asked to explain the apparent contradictions between the Copernican theory and Holy Scripture. Castelli defended the Copernican position vigorously and wrote to Galileo afterwards telling him how successful he had been in putting the arguments. Galileo, less convinced that Castelli had won the argument, wrote Letter to Castelli to him arguing that the Bible had to be interpreted in the light of what science had shown to be true. Galileo had several opponents in Florence and they made sure that a copy of the Letter to Castelli was sent to the Inquisition in Rome. However, after examining its contents they found little to which they could object.

The Catholic Church's most important figure at this time in dealing with interpretations of the Holy Scripture was Cardinal Robert Bellarmine. He seems at this time to have seen little reason for the Church to be concerned regarding the Copernican theory. The point at issue was whether Copernicus had simply put forward a mathematical theory which enabled the calculation of the positions of the heavenly bodies to be made more simply or whether he was proposing a physical reality. At this time Bellarmine viewed the theory as an elegant mathematical one which did not threaten the established Christian belief regarding the structure of the universe.

In 1616 Galileo wrote the Letter to the Grand Duchess which vigorously attacked the followers of Aristotle. In this work, which he addressed to the Grand Duchess Christina of Lorraine, he argued strongly for a non-literal interpretation of Holy Scripture when the literal interpretation would contradict facts about the physical world proved by mathematical science. In this Galileo stated quite clearly that for him the Copernican theory is not just a mathematical calculating tool, but is a physical reality:-

I hold that the Sun is located at the centre of the revolutions of the heavenly orbs and does not change place, and that the Earth rotates on itself and moves around it. Moreover ... I confirm this view not only by refuting Ptolemy's and Aristotle's arguments, but also by producing many for the other side, especially some pertaining to physical effects whose causes perhaps cannot be determined in any other way, and other astronomical discoveries; these discoveries clearly confute the Ptolemaic system, and they agree admirably with this other position and confirm it.

Pope Paul V ordered Bellarmine to have the Sacred Congregation of the Index decide on the Copernican theory. The cardinals of the Inquisition met on 24 February 1616 and took evidence from theological experts. They condemned the teachings of Copernicus, and Bellarmine conveyed their decision to Galileo who had not been personally involved in the trial. Galileo was forbidden to hold Copernican views but later events made him less concerned about this decision of the Inquisition. Most importantly Maffeo Barberini, who was an admirer of Galileo, was elected as Pope Urban VIII. This happened just as Galileo's book Il saggiatore (The Assayer) was about to be published by the Accademia dei Lincei in 1623 and Galileo was quick to dedicate this work to the new Pope. The work described Galileo's new scientific method and contains a famous quote regarding mathematics:-

Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and read the characters in which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometric figures without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it; without these one is wandering in a dark labyrinth.

Pope Urban VIII invited Galileo to papal audiences on six occasions and led Galileo to believe that the Catholic Church would not make an issue of the Copernican theory. Galileo, therefore, decided to publish his views believing that he could do so without serious consequences from the Church. However by this stage in his life Galileo's health was poor with frequent bouts of severe illness and so even though he began to write his famous Dialogue in 1624 it took him six years to complete the work.

Galileo attempted to obtain permission from Rome to publish the Dialogue in 1630 but this did not prove easy. Eventually he received permission from Florence, and not Rome. In February 1632 Galileo published Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief Systems of the World - Ptolemaic and Copernican. It takes the form of a dialogue between Salviati, who argues for the Copernican system, and Simplicio who is an Aristotelian philosopher. The climax of the book is an argument by Salviati that the Earth moves which was based on Galileo's theory of the tides. Galileo's theory of the tides was entirely false despite being postulated after Kepler had already put forward the correct explanation. It was unfortunate, given the remarkable truths the Dialogue supported, that the argument which Galileo thought to give the strongest proof of Copernicus's theory should be incorrect.

Shortly after publication of Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief Systems of the World - Ptolemaic and Copernican the Inquisition banned its sale and ordered Galileo to appear in Rome before them. Illness prevented him from travelling to Rome until 1633. Galileo's accusation at the trial which followed was that he had breached the conditions laid down by the Inquisition in 1616. However a different version of this decision was produced at the trial rather than the one Galileo had been given at the time. The truth of the Copernican theory was not an issue therefore; it was taken as a fact at the trial that this theory was false. This was logical, of course, since the judgement of 1616 had declared it totally false.

Found guilty, Galileo was condemned to lifelong imprisonment, but the sentence was carried out somewhat sympathetically and it amounted to house arrest rather than a prison sentence. He was able to live first with the Archbishop of Siena, then later to return to his home in Arcetri, near Florence, but had to spend the rest of his life watched over by officers from the Inquisition. In 1634 he suffered a severe blow when his daughter Virginia, Sister Maria Celeste, died. She had been a great support to her father through his illnesses and Galileo was shattered and could not work for many months. When he did manage to restart work, he began to write Discourses and mathematical demonstrations concerning the two new sciences.

After Galileo had completed work on the Discourses it was smuggled out of Italy, and taken to Leyden in Holland where it was published. It was his most rigorous mathematical work which treated problems on impetus, moments, and centres of gravity. Much of this work went back to the unpublished ideas in De Motu from around 1590 and the improvements which he had worked out during 1602-1604. In the Discourses he developed his ideas of the inclined plane writing:-

I assume that the speed acquired by the same movable object over different inclinations of the plane are equal whenever the heights of those planes are equal.

He then described an experiment using a pendulum to verify his property of inclined planes and used these ideas to give a theorem on acceleration of bodies in free fall:-

The time in which a certain distance is traversed by an object moving under uniform acceleration from rest is equal to the time in which the same distance would be traversed by the same movable object moving at a uniform speed of one half the maximum and final speed of the previous uniformly accelerated motion.

After giving further results of this type he gives his famous result that the distance that a body moves from rest under uniform acceleration is proportional to the square of the time taken.

One would expect that Galileo's understanding of the pendulum, which he had since he was a young man, would have led him to design a pendulum clock. In fact he only seems to have thought of this possibility near the end of his life and around 1640 he did design the first pendulum clock. Galileo died in early 1642 but the significance of his clock design was certainly realised by his son Vincenzo who tried to make a clock to Galileo's plan, but failed.

It was a sad end for so great a man to die condemned of heresy. His will indicated that he wished to be buried beside his father in the family tomb in the Basilica of Santa Croce but his relatives feared, quite rightly, that this would provoke opposition from the Church. His body was concealed and only placed in a fine tomb in the church in 1737 by the civil authorities against the wishes of many in the Church. On 31 October 1992, 350 years after Galileo's death, Pope John Paul II gave an address on behalf of the Catholic Church in which he admitted that errors had been made by the theological advisors in the case of Galileo. He declared the Galileo case closed, but he did not admit that the Church was wrong to convict Galileo on a charge of heresy because of his belief that the Earth rotates round the sun

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Leonardo da Vinci was educated in his father's house receiving the usual elementary education of reading, writing and arithmetic. In 1467 he became an apprentice learning painting, sculpture and acquiring technical and mechanical skills. He was accepted into the painters' guild in Florence in 1472 but he continued to work as an apprentice until 1477. From that time he worked for himself in Florence as a painter. Already during this time he sketched pumps, military weapons and other machines.

Between 1482 and 1499 Leonardo was in the service of the Duke of Milan. He was described in a list of the Duke's staff as a painter and engineer of the duke. As well as completing six paintings during his time in the Duke's service he also advised on architecture, fortifications and military matters. He was also considered as a hydraulic and mechanical engineer.

During his time in Milan, Leonardo became interested in geometry. He read Leon Battista Alberti's books on architecture and Piero della Francesca's On Perspective in Painting. He illustrated Pacioli's Divina proportione and he continued to work with Pacioli and is reported to have neglected his painting because he became so engrossed in geometry.

Leonardo studied Euclid and Pacioli's Suma and began his own geometry research, sometimes giving mechanical solutions. He gave several methods of squaring the circle, again using mechanical methods. He wrote a book, around this time, on the elementary theory of mechanics which appeared in Milan around 1498.

Leonardo certainly realised the possibility of constructing a telescope and in Codex Atlanticus written in 1490 he talks of

... making glasses to see the Moon enlarged.

In a later work, Codex Arundul written about 1513, he says that

... in order to observe the nature of the planets, open the roof and bring the image of a single planet onto the base of a concave mirror. The image of the planet reflected by the base will show the surface of the planet much magnified.

. He understood the fact that the Moon shone with reflected light from the Sun and he correctly explained the 'old Moon in the new Moon's arms' as the Moon's surface illuminated by light reflected from the Earth. He thought of the Moon as being similar to the Earth with seas and areas of solid ground.

In 1499 the French armies entered Milan and the Duke was defeated. Some months later Leonardo left Milan together with Pacioli. He travelled to Mantua, Venice and finally reached Florence. Although he was under constant pressure to paint, mathematical studies kept him away from his painting activity much of the time. He was for a time employed by Cesare Borgia as a

senior military architect and general engineer.

By 1503 he was back in Florence advising on the project to divert the River Arno behind Pisa to help with the siege of the city which the Florentines were engaged in. He then produced plans for a canal to allow Florence access to the sea. The canal was never built nor was the River Arno diverted.

In 1506 Leonardo returned for a second period in Milan. Again his scientific work took precedence over his painting and he was involved in hydrodynamics, anatomy, mechanics, mathematics and optics.

In 1513 the French were removed from Milan and Leonardo moved again, this time to Rome. However he seems to have led a lonely life in Rome again more devoted to mathematical studies and technical experiments in his studio than to painting. After three years of unhappiness Leonardo accepted an invitation from King Francis I to enter his service in France.

The French King gave Leonardo the title of

first painter, architect, and mechanic of the King

but seems to have left him to do as he pleased. This means that Leonardo did no painting except to finish off some works he had with him, St. John the Baptist, Mona Lisa and the Virgin and Child with St Anne. Leonardo spent most of his time arranging and editing his scientific studies.

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Pierre Fermat's father was a wealthy leather merchant and second consul of Beaumont- de- Lomagne. Pierre had a brother and two sisters and was almost certainly brought up in the town of his birth. Although there is little evidence concerning his school education it must have been at the local Franciscan monastery.

He attended the University of Toulouse before moving to Bordeaux in the second half of the 1620s. In Bordeaux he began his first serious mathematical researches and in 1629 he gave a copy of his restoration of Apollonius's Plane loci to one of the mathematicians there. Certainly in Bordeaux he was in contact with Beaugrand and during this time he produced important work on maxima and minima which he gave to Étienne d'Espagnet who clearly shared mathematical interests with Fermat.

From Bordeaux Fermat went to Orléans where he studied law at the University. He received a degree in civil law and he purchased the offices of councillor at the parliament in Toulouse. So by 1631 Fermat was a lawyer and government official in Toulouse and because of the office he now held he became entitled to change his name from Pierre Fermat to Pierre de Fermat.

For the remainder of his life he lived in Toulouse but as well as working there he also worked in his home town of Beaumont-de-Lomagne and a nearby town of Castres. From his appointment on 14 May 1631 Fermat worked in the lower chamber of the parliament but on 16 January 1638 he was appointed to a higher chamber, then in 1652 he was promoted to the highest level at the criminal court. Still further promotions seem to indicate a fairly meteoric rise through the profession but promotion was done mostly on seniority and the plague struck the region in the early 1650s meaning that many of the older men died. Fermat himself was struck down by the plague and in 1653 his death was wrongly reported, then corrected:-

I informed you earlier of the death of Fermat. He is alive, and we no longer fear for his health, even though we had counted him among the dead a short time ago.

The following report, made to Colbert the leading figure in France at the time, has a ring of truth:-

Fermat, a man of great erudition, has contact with men of learning everywhere. But he is rather preoccupied, he does not report cases well and is confused.

Of course Fermat was preoccupied with mathematics. He kept his mathematical friendship with Beaugrand after he moved to Toulouse but there he gained a new mathematical friend in Carcavi. Fermat met Carcavi in a professional capacity since both were councillors in Toulouse but they both shared a love of mathematics and Fermat told Carcavi about his mathematical discoveries.

In 1636 Carcavi went to Paris as royal librarian and made contact with Mersenne and his group. Mersenne's interest was aroused by Carcavi's descriptions of Fermat's discoveries on falling bodies, and he wrote to Fermat. Fermat replied on 26 April 1636 and, in addition to telling Mersenne about errors which he believed that Galileo had made in his description of free fall, he also told Mersenne about his work on spirals and his restoration of Apollonius's Plane loci. His work on spirals had been motivated by considering the path of free falling bodies and he had used methods generalised from Archimedes' work On spirals to compute areas under the spirals. In addition Fermat wrote:-

I have also found many sorts of analyses for diverse problems, numerical as well as geometrical, for the solution of which Viète's analysis could not have sufficed. I will share all of this with you whenever you wish and do so without any ambition, from which I am more exempt and more distant than any man in the world.

It is somewhat ironical that this initial contact with Fermat and the scientific community came through his study of free fall since Fermat had little interest in physical applications of mathematics. Even with his results on free fall he was much more interested in proving geometrical theorems than in their relation to the real world. This first letter did however contain two problems on maxima which Fermat asked Mersenne to pass on to the Paris mathematicians and this was to be the typical style of Fermat's letters, he would challenge others to find results which he had already obtained.

Roberval and Mersenne found that Fermat's problems in this first, and subsequent, letters were extremely difficult and usually not soluble using current techniques. They asked him to divulge his methods and Fermat sent Method for determining Maxima and Minima and Tangents to Curved Lines, his restored text of Apollonius's Plane loci and his algebraic approach to geometry Introduction to Plane and Solid Loci to the Paris mathematicians.

His reputation as one of the leading mathematicians in the world came quickly but attempts to get his work published failed mainly because Fermat never really wanted to put his work into a polished form. However some of his methods were published, for example Hérigone added a supplement containing Fermat's methods of maxima and minima to his major work Cursus mathematicus. The widening correspondence between Fermat and other mathematicians did not find universal praise. Frenicle de Bessy became annoyed at Fermat's problems which to him were impossible. He wrote angrily to Fermat but although Fermat gave more details in his reply, Frenicle de Bessy felt that Fermat was almost teasing him.

However Fermat soon became engaged in a controversy with a more major mathematician than Frenicle de Bessy. Having been sent a copy of Descartes' La Dioptrique by Beaugrand, Fermat paid it little attention since he was in the middle of a correspondence with Roberval and Étienne Pascal over methods of integration and using them to find centres of gravity. Mersenne asked him to give an opinion on La Dioptrique which Fermat did, describing it as

groping about in the shadows.

He claimed that Descartes had not correctly deduced his law of refraction since it was inherent in his assumptions. To say that Descartes was not pleased is an understatement. Descartes soon found reason to feel even more angry since he viewed Fermat's work on maxima, minima and tangents as reducing the importance of his own work La Géométrie which Descartes was most proud of and which he sought to show that his Discours de la méthode alone could give.

Descartes attacked Fermat's method of maxima, minima and tangents. Roberval and Étienne Pascal became involved in the argument and eventually so did Desargues who Descartes asked to act as a referee. Fermat proved correct and eventually Descartes admitted this writing:-

... seeing the last method that you use for finding tangents to curved lines, I can reply to it in no other way than to say that it is very good and that, if you had explained it in this manner at the outset, I would have not contradicted it at all.

Did this end the matter and increase Fermat's standing? Not at all since Descartes tried to damage Fermat's reputation. For example, although he wrote to Fermat praising his work on determining the tangent to a cycloid (which is indeed correct), Descartes wrote to Mersenne claiming that it was incorrect and saying that Fermat was inadequate as a mathematician and a thinker. Descartes was important and respected and thus was able to severely damage Fermat's reputation.

The period from 1643 to 1654 was one when Fermat was out of touch with his scientific colleagues in Paris. There are a number of reasons for this. Firstly pressure of work kept him from devoting so much time to mathematics. Secondly the Fronde, a civil war in France, took place and from 1648 Toulouse was greatly affected. Finally there was the plague of 1651 which must have had great consequences both on life in Toulouse and of course its near fatal consequences on Fermat himself. However it was during this time that Fermat worked on number theory.

Fermat is best remembered for this work in number theory, in particular for Fermat's Last Theorem. This theorem states that

x^n + y^n = z^n

has no non-zero integer solutions for x, y and z when n > 2. Fermat wrote, in the margin of Bachet's translation of Diophantus's Arithmetica

I have discovered a truly remarkable proof which this margin is too small to contain.

These marginal notes only became known after Fermat's son Samuel published an edition of Bachet's translation of Diophantus's Arithmetica with his father's notes in 1670.

It is now believed that Fermat's 'proof' was wrong although it is impossible to be completely certain. The truth of Fermat's assertion was proved in June 1993 by the British mathematician Andrew Wiles, but Wiles withdrew the claim to have a proof when problems emerged later in 1993. In November 1994 Wiles again claimed to have a correct proof which has now been accepted.

Unsuccessful attempts to prove the theorem over a 300 year period led to the discovery of commutative ring theory and a wealth of other mathematical discoveries.

Fermat's correspondence with the Paris mathematicians restarted in 1654 when Blaise Pascal, Étienne Pascal's son, wrote to him to ask for confirmation about his ideas on probability. Blaise Pascal knew of Fermat through his father, who had died three years before, and was well aware of Fermat's outstanding mathematical abilities. Their short correspondence set up the theory of probability and from this they are now regarded as joint founders of the subject. Fermat however, feeling his isolation and still wanting to adopt his old style of challenging mathematicians, tried to change the topic from probability to number theory. Pascal was not interested but Fermat, not realising this, wrote to Carcavi saying:-

I am delighted to have had opinions conforming to those of M Pascal, for I have infinite esteem for his genius... the two of you may undertake that publication, of which I consent to your being the masters, you may clarify or supplement whatever seems too concise and relieve me of a burden that my duties prevent me from taking on.

However Pascal was certainly not going to edit Fermat's work and after this flash of desire to have his work published Fermat again gave up the idea. He went further than ever with his challenge problems however:-

Two mathematical problems posed as insoluble to French, English, Dutch and all mathematicians of Europe by Monsieur de Fermat, Councillor of the King in the Parliament of Toulouse.

His problems did not prompt too much interest as most mathematicians seemed to think that number theory was not an important topic. The second of the two problems, namely to find all solutions of Nx^2 + 1 = y^2 for N not a square, was however solved by Wallis and Brouncker and they developed continued fractions in their solution. Brouncker produced rational solutions which led to arguments. Frenicle de Bessy was perhaps the only mathematician at that time who was really interested in number theory but he did not have sufficient mathematical talents to allow him to make a significant contribution.

Fermat posed further problems, namely that the sum of two cubes cannot be a cube (a special case of Fermat's Last Theorem which may indicate that by this time Fermat realised that his proof of the general result was incorrect), that there are exactly two integer solutions of x^2 + 4 = y^3 and that the equation x^2 + 2 = y^3 has only one integer solution. He posed problems directly to the English. Everyone failed to see that Fermat had been hoping his specific problems would lead them to discover, as he had done, deeper theoretical results.

Around this time one of Descartes' students was collecting his correspondence for publication and he turned to Fermat for help with the Fermat - Descartes correspondence. This led Fermat to look again at the arguments he had used 20 years before and he looked again at his objections to Descartes' optics. In particular he had been unhappy with Descartes' description of refraction of light and he now settled on a principle which did in fact yield the sine law of refraction that Snell and Descartes had proposed. However Fermat had now deduced it from a fundamental property that he proposed, namely that light always follows the shortest possible path. Fermat's principle, now one of the most basic properties of optics, did not find favour with mathematicians at the time.

In 1656 Fermat had started a correspondence with Huygens. This grew out of Huygens interest in probability and the correspondence was soon manipulated by Fermat onto topics of number theory. This topic did not interest Huygens but Fermat tried hard and in New Account of Discoveries in the Science of Numbers sent to Huygens via Carcavi in 1659, he revealed more of his methods than he had done to others.

Fermat described his method of infinite descent and gave an example on how it could be used to prove that every prime of the form 4k + 1 could be written as the sum of two squares. For suppose some number of the form 4k + 1 could not be written as the sum of two squares. Then there is a smaller number of the form 4k + 1 which cannot be written as the sum of two squares. Continuing the argument will lead to a contradiction. What Fermat failed to explain in this letter is how the smaller number is constructed from the larger. One assumes that Fermat did know how to make this step but again his failure to disclose the method made mathematicians lose interest. It was not until Euler took up these problems that the missing steps were filled in.

Fermat is described as

Secretive and taciturn, he did not like to talk about himself and was loath to reveal too much about his thinking. ... His thought, however original or novel, operated within a range of possibilities limited by that [1600 - 1650] time and that [France] place.

Carl B Boyer, , says:-

Recognition of the significance of Fermat's work in analysis was tardy, in part because he adhered to the system of mathematical symbols devised by François Viète, notations that Descartes' "Géométrie" had rendered largely obsolete. The handicap imposed by the awkward notations operated less severely in Fermat's favourite field of study, the theory of numbers, but here, unfortunately, he found no correspondent to share his enthusiasm.

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Stephen Hawking's parents lived in London where his father was undertaking research into medicine. However, London was a dangerous place during World War II and Stephen's mother was sent to the safer town of Oxford where Stephen was born. The family were soon back together living in Highgate, north London, where Stephen began his schooling.

In 1950 Stephen's father moved to the Institute for Medical Research in Mill Hill. The family moved to St Albans so that the journey to Mill Hill was easier. Stephen attended St Albans High School for Girls (which took boys up to the age of 10). When he was older he attended St Albans school but his father wanted him to take the scholarship examination to go to Westminster public school. However Stephen was ill at the time of the examinations and remained at St Albans school which he had attended from the age of 11. Stephen writes in :-

I got an education there that was as good as, if not better than, that I would have had at Westminster. I have never found that my lack of social graces has been a hindrance.

Hawking wanted to specialise in mathematics in his last couple of years at school where his mathematics teacher had inspired him to study the subject. However Hawking's father was strongly against the idea and Hawking was persuaded to make chemistry his main school subject. Part of his father's reasoning was that he wanted Hawking to go to University College, Oxford, the College he himself had attended, and that College had no mathematics fellow.

In March 1959 Hawking took the scholarship examinations with the aim of studying natural sciences at Oxford. He was awarded a scholarship, despite feeling that he had performed badly, and at University College he specialised in physics in his natural sciences degree. He only just made a First Class degree in 1962 and he explains how the attitude of the time worked against him:-

The prevailing attitude at Oxford at that time was very anti-work. You were supposed to be brilliant without effort, or accept your limitations and get a fourth-class degree. To work hard to get a better class of degree was regarded as the mark of a grey man - the worst epithet in the Oxford vocabulary.

From Oxford, Hawking moved to Cambridge to take up research in general relativity and cosmology, a difficult area for someone with only a little mathematical background. Hawking had noticed that he was becoming rather clumsy during his last year at Oxford and, when he returned home for Christmas 1962 at the end of his first term at Cambridge, his mother persuaded him to see a doctor.

In early 1963 he spent two weeks having tests in hospital and motor neurone disease (Lou Gehrig's disease) was diagnosed. His condition deteriorated quickly and the doctors predicted that he would not live long enough to complete his doctorate. However Hawking writes:-

... although there was a cloud hanging over my future, I found to my surprise that I was enjoying life in the present more than I had before. I began to make progress with my research...

The reason that his research progressed was that he met a girl he wanted to marry and realised he had to complete his doctorate to get a job so:-

... I therefore started working for the first time in my life. To my surprise I found I liked it.

After completing his doctorate in 1966 Hawking was awarded a fellowship at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. At first his position was that of Research Fellow, but later he became a Professorial Fellow at Gonville and Caius College. In 1973 he left the Institute of Astronomy and joined to the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at Cambridge. He became Professor of Gravitational Physics at Cambridge in 1977. In 1979 Hawking was appointed Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge. The man born 300 years to the day after Galileo died now held Newton's chair at Cambridge.

Between 1965 and 1970 Hawking worked on singularities in the theory of general relativity devising new mathematical techniques to study this area of cosmology. Much of his work in this area was done in collaboration with Roger Penrose who, at that time, was at Birkbeck College, London. From 1970 Hawking began to apply his previous ideas to the study of black holes.

Continuing this work on black holes, Hawking discovered in 1970 a remarkable property. Using quantum theory and general relativity he was able to show that black holes can emit radiation. His success with proving this made him work from that time on combining the theory of general relativity with quantum theory. In 1971 Hawking investigated the creation of the Universe and predicted that, following the big bang, many objects as heavy as 109 tons but only the size of a proton would be created. These mini black holes have large gravitational attraction governed by general relativity, while the laws of quantum mechanics would apply to objects that small.

Another remarkable achievement of Hawking's using these techniques was his no boundary proposal made in 1983 with Jim Hartle of Santa Barbara. Hawking explains that this would mean:-

... that both time and space are finite in extent, but they don't have any boundary or edge. ... there would be no singularities, and the laws of science would hold everywhere, including at the beginning of the universe.

In 1982 Hawking decided to write a popular book on cosmology. By 1984 he had produced a first draft of A Brief History of Time. However Hawking was to suffer a further illness:-

I was in Geneva, at CERN, the big particle accelerator, in the summer of 1985. ... I caught pneumonia and was rushed to hospital. The hospital in Geneva suggested to my wife that it was not worth keeping the life support machine on. But she was having none of that. I was flown back to Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge, where a surgeon called Roger Grey carried out a tracheotomy. That operation saved my life but took away my voice.

Hawking was given a computer system to enable him to have an electronic voice. It was with these difficulties that he revised the draft of A Brief History of Time which was published in 1988. The book broke sales records in a way that it would have been hard to predict. By May 1995 it had been in The Sunday Times best-sellers list for 237 weeks breaking the previous record of 184 weeks. This feat is recorded in the 1998 Guinness Book of Records. Also recorded there is the fact that the paperback edition was published on 6 April 1995 and reached number one in the best sellers in 3 days. By April 1993 there had been 40 hardback editions of A Brief History of Time in the United States and 39 hardback editions in the UK.

Of course Hawking has received, and continues to receive, a large number of honours. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1974, being one of its youngest fellows. He was awarded the CBE in 1982, and was made a Companion of Honour in 1989. Hawking has also received many foreign awards and prizes and was elected a Member of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States.

[Mohammad Hosseyn]

Albert Einstein Biography (1879–1955(


Physicist. Born on March 14, 1879, in Ulm, Germany. Albert Einstein changed our understanding of the physical world and is considered the one of the greatest thinkers in science ever. He was, however, not such a good student when he was young. He struggled to get into Zürich Polytechnic, failing the entrance exam once. After graduating in 1900, Einstein had a hard time finding a job. He eventually landed a job at the Swiss Patent Office in 1902. This job gave him the time to do some of his most significant work, writing theoretic papers on physics, most notably his theories of relativity.

In 1909, Albert Einstein joined the faculty of University of Zürich as an associate professor. During the next few years, he also became a professor at the German University in Prague and his alma mater, Zürich Polytechnic. He began working at the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin in 1914 and soon finished his work on his general theory of relativity, which was published in 1916. For his contributions to his field, Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921. He became a type of scientific star with people crowding lecture halls and auditoriums just to hear him talk about his theories.

In 1933, Albert Einstein left Germany to escape the increasingly harsh treatment of Jews in Hitler's Germany. He went to work at the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton University in New Jersey. He later became a U.S. citizen. During World War II, Einstein wrote a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt expressing his concerns about the atomic bomb.

After retiring from the institute in 1945, Albert Einstein spent much of his time giving lectures and speeches and working on theories. He was asked to become the president of Israel in 1952 but turned the position down. In his final years, he was hospitalized with stomach pains several times and his health began to decline. Albert Einstein died on April 18, 1955. One of science’s greatest minds, he was named Person of the Century by Time magazine in 2000.

Twice married, Albert Einstein had two children with first wife Mileva. The couple divorced in 1919. That same year, he married his cousin Elsa Löwenthal.

© 2007 A&E Television Networks. All rights reserved.

[دل تنگم]

(Margaret Atwood (1939 - Present
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[ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]


Margaret Atwood was born in Ottawa, Ontario, in 1939. She is the daughter of a forest entomologist, and spent part of her early years in the bush of North Quebec. She moved, at the age of seven, to Toronto. She studied at the University of Toronto, then took her masters degree at Radcliffe College, Massachusetts, in 1962


She is Canada's most eminent novelist and poet, and also writes short stories, critical studies, screenplays, radio scripts and books for children, her works having been translated into over 30 languages. Her reviews and critical articles have appeared in various eminent magazines and she has also edited many books, including The New Oxford Book of Canadian Verse in English (1983) and, with Robert Weaver, The Oxford Book of Canadian Short Stories in English (1986). She has been a full-time writer since 1972, first teaching English, then holding a variety of academic posts and writer residencies. She was President of the Writers Union of Canada from 1981-1982 and President of PEN, Canada from 1984-1986


Her first publication was a book of poetry, The Circle Game (1964), which received the Governor General's Literary Award for Poetry (Canada). Several more poetry collections have followed since, including Interlunar (1988), Morning in the Burned House (1995) and the latest, Eating Fire: Selected Poetry, 1965-1995 (1998). Also a short story writer, her books of short fiction include Dancing Girls and Other Stories (1982), Wilderness Tips (1991), and Good Bones (1992)


She is perhaps best known, however, for her novels, in which she creates strong, often enigmatic, women characters and excels in telling open-ended stories, while dissecting contemporary urban life and sexual politics. Her first novel was The Edible Woman (1969), about a woman who cannot eat and feels that she is being eaten. This was followed by: Surfacing (1973), which deals with a woman's investigation into her father's disappearance; Lady Oracle (1977); Life Before Man (1980); Bodily Harm (1982), the story of Rennie Wilford, a young journalist recuperating on a Caribbean island; and The Handmaid's Tale (1986), a futuristic novel describing a woman's struggle to break free from her role. Her latest novels have been: Cat's Eye (1989), dealing with the subject of bullying among young girls; The Robber Bride (1993); Alias Grace (1996), the tale of a woman who is convicted for her involvement in two murders about which she claims to have no memory; The Blind Assassin (2000), a multi-layered family memoir; and Oryx and Crake (2003), a vision of a scientific dystopia, which was shortlisted for the 2003 Man Booker Prize for Fiction and for the 2004 Orange Prize for Fictio


These novels have received many awards. Alias Grace, The Handmaid's Tale and Cat's Eye have all been shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction. The Blind Assassin was successful in winning this prize in 2000


Some of Margaret Atwood's books have been adapted for stage and screen. A film based on Alias Grace is currently being made, and a four-part mini-seres based on The Blind Assassin and screenplay for The Robber Bride are also underway. The theatrical version of The Edible Woman is currently also being successfully staged. The Handmaid's Tale was adapted for screen by Harold Pinter in a film directed by Volker Schlorndorf, released in 1990, and is now being staged as an opera by Poul Ruders. The British Premiere was performed by English National Opera at the Coliseum, London, in April 2003


Margaret Atwood is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, has been presented with the Order of Ontario and the Norwegian Order of Literary Merit, and has been awarded sixteen honorary degrees. She has lived in many places including Canada, England, Scotland and France, and currently lives in Toronto


.(Her latest book is a collection of short stories, The Tent (2006


...Margaret Atwood Poems [ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]




:Here is an example of her poems
You Fit Into Me
You fit into me
like a hook into an eye
A fish hook
An open eye
by Margaret Atwood




Books by Margaret Atwood[ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]




[ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ] [ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ] [ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ] [ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ] [ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ] [ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ] [ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ] [ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ] [ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ] [ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ] [ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]][ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ] [ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ] [ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ] [ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ] [ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ] [ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ] [ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ] [ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ] [ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ] [ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ] [ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ] [ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ] [ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ] [ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ] [ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ] [ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ] [ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ] [ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ] [ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ] [ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ] [ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ] [ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ] [ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ] [ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]



Margaret Atwood Quotes


"A divorce is like an amputation: you survive it, but there's less of you."


"A ratio of failures is built into the process of writing. The wastebasket has evolved for a reason."


"A word after a word after a word is power."


"An eye for an eye only leads to more blindness."


"Because I am a mother, I am capable of being shocked: as I never was when I was not one."


"I hope that people will finally come to realize that there is only one 'race' - the human race - and that we are all members of it."


"I've never understood why people consider youth a time of freedom and joy. It's probably because they have forgotten their own."


"If I were going to convert to any religion I would probably choose Catholicism because it at least has female saints and the Virgin Mary."


"If the national mental illness of the United States is megalomania, that of Canada is paranoid schizophrenia."


"In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt."


"Never pray for justice, because you might get some."


"Popular art is the dream of society; it does not examine itself."


"The Eskimo has fifty-two names for snow because it is important to them; there ought to be as many for love."


"Their mothers had finally caught up to them and been proven right. There were consequences after all but they were the consequences to things you didn't even know you'd done."


"We still think of a powerful man as a born leader and a powerful woman as an anomaly."


"You need a certain amount of nerve to be a writer."

[kenvyPetersson]

Now that you’ve found your new dream home, where do you start? With a gazillion home lenders and mortgage brokers it’s a challenge. According to the Mortgage Bankers Association, each year first time home buyers borrow over 980 billion dollars in loans. But the question still remains — how do you shop for the best mortgage rate when you have bad credit problems?

With all of today’s conveniences, obtaining a first time homeowner mortgage is really pretty simple. However, there are many factors involved, which can seem confusing if you're a first- time buyer.. To clarify the process for new home buyers the following 11 steps will assist you in shopping for the prime rate you deserve.

read more... ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ])

[احمد ترابی]

nikole kidman
actrees nicole kidman was born in hoaoluu hawaii in 1967.her father an australian was a student in hawaii at the time.
when she was 7 the family returned to australia and kidman grew up in suburb of sydney and.............a

[saber57]

Nader shah afshar


Reign -------------------1736-1747


Born ---------------------August 6,1698


Died ----------------------June 19,1747


Predecessor -------------Abbas III


succesor------------------Adil shah


Early life


Nader Shah was born in Dastgerd . into the Qereqlu clan of the Afshars , a semi-nomadic tribe in Khorasan, a province in the north-east of the Persian Empire. His father, a poor Peasant , died while Nader was still a child. According to legends, Nader and his mother were carried off as slaves by marauding uzbek or Turkmen tribesmen , but Nader managed to escape. He joined a band of brigands while still a boy and eventually became their leader. Under the patronage of Afshar chieftains , he rose through the ranks to become a powerful military figure. Nader married the two daughters of Baba Ali
Beg, a local chief



The fall of the Safavid dynasty


Nader grew up during the final years of the safavid Persia since 1502. At its peak, under such figures as Abbas the Great a powerful empire, but by the early 18th century the state was in serious decline and the reigning shah, Soltan Hossein , was a weak ruler. When Soltan Hussein attempted to quell a rebellion by Ghilzai Afghans in Kandahar, the governor he sent was killed. Under their leader Mahmud the rebellious Afghans moved westwards against the shah himself and in 1722 they defeated a vastly superior force at the Battle of Golnabad and then besieged the capital, [After the shah failed to escape to rally a relief force elsewhere, the city was starved into submission and Soltan Hussein abdicated, handing power to Mahmud. In Khorasan, Nader at first submitted to the local Afghan governor of Mashhad , Malek Mahmud, but then rebelled and built up his own small army. Soltan Hossein’s son had declared himself Shah Tahmasp II, but found little support and fled to the Qajar tribe, who offered to back him. Meanwhile, Persia's imperial rivals, the Ottomans and the Russians , took advantage of the chaos in the country to seize territory for themselves


Defeat of the Afghans


Tahmasp and the Qajar leader Fath Ali Khan (the ancestor of Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar contacted Nader and asked him to join their cause and drive the Afghans out of Khorasan. He agreed and thus became a figure of national importance. When Nader discovered that Fath Ali Khan was in treacherous correspondence with Malek Mahmud and revealed this to the shah, Tahmasp executed him and made Nader the chief of his army instead. Nader subsequently took on the title Tahmasp Qoli (Servant of Tahmasp). In late 1726, Nader recaptured
Nader chose not to march directly on Isfahan. First, in May 1729, he defeated the Abdali Afghans near Herat. Many of the Abdali Afghans subsequently joined his army. The new Ghilzai Afghan shah,Ashraf, decided to move against Nader but in September 1729, Nader defeated him at the Battle of Damghan and again, decisively, in November at Murchakhort. Ashraf fled and Nader finally entered Isfahan, handing it over to Tahmasp in December. The citizens' rejoicing was cut short when Nader plundered them to pay his army. Tahmasp made Nader governor over many eastern provinces, including his native Khorasan, and married him to his sister. Nader pursued and defeated Ashraf, who was murdered by his own followers. In 1738 Nader Shah besieged and destroyed Kandahar. This was the ultimate defeat of any remaining Afghan forces. Nader Shah built a new city near Kandahar , which he named
"Naderabad"


Ottoman campaign


In the spring of 1730, Nader attacked the Ottomans and regained most of the territory lost during the recent chaos. At the same time, the Abdali Afghans rebelled and besieged Mashhad, forcing Nader to suspend his campaign and save his brother, Ebrahim. It took Nader fourteen months to defeat the Abdali Afghans.
Relations between Nader and the Shah had declined as the latter grew jealous of his general's military successes. While Nader was absent in the east, Tahmasp tried to assert himself by launching a foolhardy campaign to recapture Yerevan . He ended up losing all of Nader’s recent gains to the Ottomans, and signed a treaty ceding Georgia ] and Armenia in exchange for Tabriz]. Nader saw that the moment had come to ease Tahmasp from power. He denounced the treaty, seeking popular support for a war against the Ottomans. In Isfahan, Nader got Tahmasp drunk then showed him to the courtiers asking if a man in such a state was fit to rule. In 1732 he forced Tahmasp to abdicate in favor of the Shah’s baby son, Abbas III, to whom Nader became regent.
Nader decided he could win back the territory in Armenia and Georgia by seizing Ottoman Baghdad and then offering it in exchange for the lost provinces, but his plan went badly amiss when his army was routed by the Ottoman general Topal Osman Pasha near the city in 1733. Nader decided he needed to regain the initiative as soon as possible to save his position because revolts were already breaking out in Persia. He faced Topal again with a larger force and defeated and killed him. He then besieged Baghdad, as well as Ganja in the northern provinces, earning a Russian alliance against the Ottomans. Nader scored a great victory over a superior Ottoman force at Baghavard and by the summer of 1735, Persian Armenia and Georgia were his again. In March 1735, he signed a treaty with the Russians in
Ganja by which the latter agreed to withdraw all of their troops from Persian territory



Nader becomes shah


In January 1736, Nader held a qoroltai (a grand meeting in the tradition of Genghis Khan and Timur) on the Moghan Plain] Azerbaija]. The leading figures in Persian political and religious life attended. Nader suggested he should be proclaimed the new shah in place of the young Abbas III. Everyone agreed, many—if not most—enthusiastically, the rest fearing Nader’s anger if they showed support for the deposed Safavids. Nader was crowned Shah of Iran on March 8, 1736, a date his astrologers had chosen as being especially propitious


Religious policy


Nader also proposed religious reforms. The Safavids had introduced Shi'a Islam as the state religion of Persia. Nader believed this had intensified the conflict with the Ottoman Empire which was Sunni. His own army was also a mixture of Sunni and Shi'a Muslims. He wanted Persia to adopt a form of religion that would be more acceptable to Sunnis and suggested Persia should adopt a form of Shi'ism he called "Ja'fari" in honour of the sixth Shi'a imam Ja'far al-Sadiq . He banned certain Shi'a practices which were particularly offensive to Sunnis, such as the cursing of the first three caliphs. Nader hoped that "Ja'farism" would be accepted as a fifth school mazhab of Sunni Islam and that the Ottomans would allow its adherents to go on the hajj , or pilgrimage, to Mecca, which was within their territory. In the subsequent peace negotiations, the Ottomans refused to acknowledge Ja'farism as a fifth mazhab but they did allow Persian pilgrims to go on the hajj. Nader was interested in gaining rights for Persians to go on the hajj in part because of revenues from the pilgrimage trade . Nader's other primary aim in his religious reforms was to weaken the Safavids further since Shi'a Islam had always been a major element in support for the dynasty. He had the chief mullah Persia strangled after he was heard expressing support for the Safavids. Among his reforms was the introduction of what came to be known as the kolah-e Naderi. This was a hat with four peaks which symbolised the first four caliphs]


Invasion of India


In 1738, Nader Shah conquered Kandahar], the last outpost of the Ghilzai Afghans. His thoughts now turned to Mughal India to the south. This once powerful Muslim state was falling apart as the nobles became increasingly disobedient and the Hindu Marathas Marathas made inroads on its territory from the south-west. Its ruler Mohammed Shah was powerless to reverse this disintegration. Nader used the pretext of his Afghan enemies taking refuge in India to cross the border and capture Kabul, Ghazni and [Lahore. He then advanced deeper into India crossing the river Indus before the end of year. He defeated the Mughal army at the huge Battle of Karnal in February, 1739. After this victory, Nader captured Mohammad Shah and entered with him into Delhi ]. When a rumour broke out that Nader had been assassinated, some of the Indians attacked and killed Persian troops. Nader reacted by ordering his soldiers to massacre the population and plunder the city. During the course of one day (March 22) 20,000 to 30,000 Indians were killed by the Persian troops, forcing Mohammad Shah to beg for mercy. In response, Nader Shah agreed to withdraw, but Mohammad Shah paid the consequence in handing over the keys of his royal treasury, and losing even the Peacock Throne to the Persian emperor. The Peacock Throne thereafter served as a symbol of Persian imperial might. Among a trove of other fabulous jewels, Nader also gained the Koh-i-Noor ] and Darya-ye Noor diamonds (Koh-i-Noor means "Mountain of Light" in Persian Darya-ye Noor means "Sea of Light"). The Persian troops left Delhi at the beginning of May 1739. Nader's soldiers also took with them thousands of elephants , horses and camels , loaded with the booty they had collected. The plunder seized from India was so rich that Nader stopped in Iran for a period of three years following his return


After India


The Indian campaign was the zenith of Nader's career. Afterwards he became increasingly despotic as his health declined markedly. Nader had left his son Reza Qoli Mirza to rule Persia in his absence. Reza had behaved highhandedly and somewhat cruelly but he had kept the peace in Persia. Having heard rumours that his father had died, he had made preparations for assuming the crown. These included the murder of the former shah Tahmasp and his family, including the nine-year old Abbas III. On hearing the news, Reza’s wife, who was Tahmasp’s sister, committed suicide. Nader was not impressed with his son’s waywardness and reprimanded him, but he took him on his expedition to conquer territory in Transoxiana. In 1740 he conquered Khanate of Khiva . After the Persians had forced the Uzbek khanate of Bokhara to submit, Nader wanted Reza to marry the khan’s elder daughter because she was a descendant of his hero Genghis Khan, but Reza flatly refused and Nader married the girl himself. Nader also conquered Khwarezm on this expedition into Central Asia.
Nader now decided to punish Daghestan for the death of his brother Ebrahim Qoli on a campaign a few years earlier. In 1741, while Nader was passing through the forest of Mazanderan on his way to fight the Daghestanis, an assassin took a shot at him but Nader was only lightly wounded. He began to suspect his son was behind the attempt and confined him to Tehran . Nader’s increasing ill health made his temper ever worse. Perhaps it was his illness that made Nader lose the initiative in his war against the Lezgin tribes of Daghestan. Frustratingly for him, they resorted to guerrilla warfare and the Persians could make little headway against them. Nader accused his son of being behind the assassination attempt in Mazanderan. Reza angrily protested his innocence, but Nader had him blinded as punishment, although he immediately regretted it. Soon afterwards, Nader started executing the nobles who had witnessed his son's blinding. In his last years, Nader became increasingly paranoid, ordering the assassination of large numbers of suspected enemies.
With the wealth he gained from India, Nader started to build a Persian navy . With lumber from Mazandaran , he built ships in Bushehr . He also purchased thirty ships in India. He recaptured the Bahrain from the Arabs. In 1743 he conquered Oman and its main capital the city of Muscat . In 1743 Nader started another war against the Ottoman Empire. Despite having a huge army at his disposal, in this campaign Nader showed little of his former military brilliance. It ended in 1746 with the signing of a peace treaty, in which the Ottomans agreed to let Nader occupy Najaf



Domestic policies


Nader changed the Iranian coinage system. He minted silver coins, called Naderi, that were equal to the Mughal rupee Nader discontinued the policy of paying soldiers based on land tenure. Like the late Safavids he resettled tribes. Nader Shah transformed the Shahsevan, a nomadic group living around Azerbaijan whose name literally means "shah lover", into a tribal confederacy which defended Iran against the Ottomans and Russians. In addition, he increased the number of soldiers under his command and reduced the number of soldiers under tribal and provincial control. His reforms may have strengthened the country, but they did little to improve Iran's suffering economy


Death and legacy


Nader became crueller and crueller as a result of his illness and his desire to extort more and more tax money to pay for his military campaigns. More and more revolts broke out and Nader crushed them ruthlessly, building towers from his victims’ skulls in imitation of his hero Timur. In 1747, Nader set off for Khorasan where he intended to punish Kurdish ]rebels . Some of his officers feared he was about to execute them and plotted against him. Nader Shah was assassinated on 19 June 1747 at Fathabad in [Khorasan. He was surprised in his sleep by Salah Bey, captain of the guards, and stabbed with a sword. Nader was able to kill two of the assassins before he died After his death, he was succeeded by his nephew Ali Qoli, who renamed himself Adil Shah ("righteous king"). Adil Shah was probably involved in the assassination plot. Adil Shah was deposed within a year. During the struggle between Adil Shah, his brother Ibrahim Khan and Nader's grandson Shah Rukh almost all provincial governors declared independence, established their own states, and the entire Empire of Nader Shah fell into anarchy. Finally, Karim Khan founded the Zand dynasty and became ruler of Iran by 1760, while Ahmad Shah Durrani had already proclaimed independence in the east, marking the foundation of modern Afghanistan.
Nader Shah was well known to the European public of the time. In 1768, Christian VII of Denmark commissioned Sir William Jones to translate a Persian language biography of Nader Shah written by his Minister Mirza Mehdi Khan Astarabadi into French . It was published in 1770 as Histoire de Nadir Chah. Nader's Indian campaign alerted the British East India Company to the extreme weakness of the Mughal Empire and the possibility of expanding to fill the power vacuum. Without Nader, "eventual British rule in India] would have come later and in a different form, perhaps never at all - with important global effects



[ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]




source:



برای مشاهده محتوا ، لطفا وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید

[saber57]

mohammad reza pahlavi

Early life
--------------------------

Born in Tehran to reza pahlavi and his second wife, Tadj Ol-moluk , Mohammad Reza was the eldest son of the first Shah of the pahlavi dynasty, and the third of his eleven children. He was born with a twin sister, Ashtaf Pahlavi . However, Mohammad Reza, Ashraf, Ali Reza , and their older half-sister, Fatemeh, were born as non-royals, as their father did not become Shah until 1925.
On February 21, 1921, Reza Khan together with Seyyed Zia'eddin Tabatabaee staged a successful coup d'état against the reigning Qajar dynasty of persia . Years later, on December 12, 1925, Reza Khan was declared Shah by the country's National Assembly, the Majlis of Iran . He was crowned in a ceremony on April 25, 1926; at the same time, his son Mohammad Reza was proclaimed Crown Prince of Iran.
As a child, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi attended Institue Le Rosey , a Swiss boarding school , completing his studies there in 1935. Around the same time, his father officially asked the international community to refer to Persia by its internal name, " Iran". Upon Mohammad Reza's return to the country, he enrolled in the local military academy in Tehran; he remained in the academy until 1938

Exile and death
------------------------
The Shah traveled from country to country in his second exile, seeking what he hoped would be a temporary residence. First he went to Egypt, and got an invitation and warm welcome from president Anware El-sadat. He later lived in Morocco, the Bahamas , and Mexico . But his Pancreatic cancer began to grow worse and required immediate and sophisticated treatment. He was offered treatment in Switzerland but insisted on treatment in the United States.
On October 22, 1979, at the request of David Rockefeller , President Jimmy Carter reluctantly allowed the Shah into the United States to undergo medical treatment. This act was extremely unpopular with the revolutionary movement, which had been angered by the United States' overthrow of the democratically elected Prime Minister Mossadegh, and years of support for the Shah's rule. The Iranian government demanded the return of the Shah to Iran to stand trial; the American government refused to turn him over.
This resulted in the storming of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, and the kidnapping of American diplomats, military personnel and intelligence officers, which soon became known as the Iran hostage crisis. According to the Shah's book, Answer to history, in the end the USA never provided the Shah any kind of health care and asked him to leave the country
He left the United States on December 15, 1979, and lived for a short time in the Isla Contadora in Panama. The new government in Iran still demanded his and his wife's immediate extradition to Tehran. A short time after the Shah's arrival, an Iranian ambassador was dispatched to the Central American nation carrying a 450 page extradition request. That official appeal greatly alarmed both the Shah and his advisors. Whether the Panamanian government would have complied is a matter of speculation among historians.
After that event, the Shah again sought the support of Egyptian president Anwar El-Sadat who renewed his offer of permanent asylum in Egypt to the ailing monarch. The Shah returned to Egypt in March 1980 where he received urgent medical treatment but nevertheless died from complications of non-Hodgkin lymphoma on July 27, 1980 at the age of 60. Egyptian President Sadat gave the Shah a state funeral.
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi is buried in the Al RFifa'i Mosque in Cairo, a mosque of great symbolic importance. The last royal rulers of two monarchies are buried there, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi of Iran and King Farouk of Egypt, his former brother-in-law. The tombs lie off to the left of the entrance



[ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]


I eliminate all aspects of his life,you can refer to below site:



برای مشاهده محتوا ، لطفا وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید

[C. Breezy]

Chris Brown

[ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]

Singer, songwriter, actor. Born on May 5, 1989, in Tappahannock, Virginia. Although he is still in his teens, Chris Brown is already on his way to music superstardom with his smooth voice, amazing dance moves, and boy-next-door charm. Growing up in a small town of roughly 2,000 people, he was a born entertainer. Brown enjoyed singing in his church choir and was inspired by such musical artists as Sam Cooke, Stevie Wonder, and Michael Jackson. He also showed off his dance prowess by imitating the dance moves of another one of his idols, Usher.
Brown was discovered by Tina Davis, who was working for Def Jam Recordings at the time. “The first thing that hit me was his unique voice,” Davis told Billboard magazine. “I thought ‘This kid is a star.’” Davis eventually became his manager and helped him land a deal with Jive Records, which had developed other young acts such as Britney Spears and ‘N Sync and is home to other hip-hop and R&B stars such as R. Kelly, Usher, and Kanye West. At the time of deal, Brown was only 15 years.
Brown’s self-titled album was released in November 2005 and quickly found its way into the charts. Working with established producers and songwriters, he had a number one hit with “Run It!,” which was co-written by Scott Storch and Sean Garrett. The track also featured a guest appearance by rapper Juelz Santana. More hits followed, including “Yo (Excuse Me Miss)” and “Gimme That,” which was written by Garrett and Storch. While many of the songs have a hip-hop influence, Brown’s voice has a classic R&B sound. And just like many other teenagers, dating and girls figure prominently in his songs. He has sometimes been compared to Michael Jackson because of his dual talents as a singer and dancer.
The album brought Brown two Grammy Award nominations for Best New Artist and Best R&B Contemporary Album. While he did not win, he showed the audience at the Grammy Awards just how talented he was by holding his own while performing with two R&B legends, Lionel Richie and Smokey Robinson. Brown went on to receive a number of other awards, including an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding New Artist. With a large following of young fans, it was no surprise when he won a Teen Choice Award for Choice Music Breakout Artist Male.
In 2006, Brown went out on the road for his Up Close & Personal tour. He played more than 30 concerts in cities across the country. While he enjoyed playing live, it was not without its hazards. “Once during a show, I reached out to touch these girls’ hands, and they pulled me off the stage,” Brown told CosmoGirl magazine.


[ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]



Expanding his career as an entertainer, Brown has branched out into acting. He had a small role in the box office hit Stomp in the Yard (2007), which centered around a step dance competition. The film also featured another popular R&B performer, Ne-Yo. On the small screen, Brown played against type as a high school band geek on The O.C. for several episodes.

The final months of 2007 brought a wave of new projects for Brown. He released his second album, Exclusive, in November. On this latest project, Brown became more hands on behind the scenes. He helped write several tracks, including the hit single “Kiss Kiss” with T-Pain. In addition to T-Pain, Brown worked with Sean Garrett on “Wall to Wall” and will.i.am and Tank on “Picture Perfect” among others. He also came up the concepts for his music videos and served as co-director on them.


[ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]



Around the same time, Brown returned to the big screen with a more substantial role in the holiday-themed dramatic comedy, This Christmas (2007). As Michael “Baby” Whitfield, he played a young man wanting to pursue a musical career despite opposition from his family. The film also featured Delroy Lindo, Loretta Devine, Regina King, and Mekhi Phifer. Next up for the budding actor is reportedly the lead role in the sports drama Phenom.
When he is not working, Brown can be found playing basketball, riding his four-wheel vehicles, and playing video games. While he likes to have fun, he also has a serious side. Brown is committed to helping others, donating a portion of ticket sales from his 2006 tour to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. He has also worked with the organization’s Math-A-Thon fund-raising program.


I Can't believe he's just 3 years elder than me !!!! [ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]

[C. Breezy]

Rihanna


[ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]


Robyn Rihanna Fenty (born February 20, 1988), who performs under the mononym Rihanna (pronounced /riːˈɑːnə/), is a Barbadian singer, model, and beauty queen. Born in Saint Michael, Barbados Rihanna relocated to the United States at the age of sixteen to pursue a recording career, under the guidance of record producer Evan Rogers. She subsequently signed a contract with Def Jam Recordings after auditioning for then-label head Jay-Z.

[ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]

In 2005, Rihanna released her debut studio album, Music of the Sun, which peaked within the top ten of the Billboard 200 and features the Billboard Hot 100 hit single "Pon de Replay". Less than a year later, she released her second studio album, A Girl Like Me, peaking within the top five of the Billboard albums chart and produced her first number one single, "SOS". Rihanna's third studio album, Good Girl Gone Bad (2007), peaking at number two on the Billboard 200, released three number one hit singles—"Umbrella", "Take a Bow", and "Disturbia". The album was nominated for nine Grammy Awards, winning Best Rap/Sung Collaboration for "Umbrella", which features Jay-Z.

[ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]

Rihanna had sold over eleven million albums worldwide and has received several allocates, including the 2007 World Music Awards for World's Best-Selling Pop Female Artist and Female Entertainer of the Year, as well as the 2008 American Music Awards for Favorite Soul/R&B Female Artist and Favorite Pop/Rock Female Artist. She also serves as the cultural ambassador for Barbados.

1988–2004: Early life and recording contract

Rihanna was born in Saint Michael, Barbados, to Ronald and Monica Fenty. She has two younger brothers, Rorrey and Rajad Fenty. Her mother, a native of Guyana, is Afro-Guyanese and her father is Barbadian and Irish. Rihanna's parents divorced when she was fourteen years old.

Rihanna attended Charles F. Broome Memorial School, a primary school in Barbados, and then the Combermere School, where she formed a musical trio with two of her classmates at the age of fifteen. In 2004, she won the Miss Combermere Beauty Pageant. She was an army cadet in a sub-military programme that trained with the military of Barbados and Shontelle was her drill sergeant.

[ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]

At the age of fifteen she formed a girl group with two of her classmates. In 2003, friends introduced Rihanna and her two bandmates to record producer Evan Rogers, who was vacationing in Barbados with his wife. The group auditioned for Rogers, who said that "the minute Rihanna walked into the room, it was like the other two girls didn't exist." While auditioning for Rogers, Rihanna sang Destiny's Child's cover of "Emotion". Over the next year, Rihanna and her mom shuttled back and forth to Rogers home in Stamford, Connecticut. Then, shortly after turning 16, she relocated to the U.S. and moved in with Rogers and his wife. Carl Sturken, helped Rihanna record a four-song demo, which included what would become her first hit, "Pon de Replay" to send to various recording companies. Rihanna's demo made its way to Def Jam, which invited her to audition for the label's then-president, Jay-Z, who quickly signed her.

[sepid12ir]

Oh My God! these guys are just 20 but well-known in all over the univers!....seems we gotta a very small world.......!

[saber57]

:6:Early life


Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini was born to Mustafa Musawi and Hajiyah Aga Khanum in the town of khomein about 300 kilometers (180 miles) south of Tehran, on September 24, 1902. Khomeini is called a sayyid as his family traces its descent from the seventh of the Twelve Imams , Musa al-kazim Several of his close ancestors were dedicated to Islamic studies: his father and both of his grandfathers were all Shia clerics. Khomeini's paternal grandfather, Sayid Ahmad Musawi , spent many years in India before returning to Persia to purchase a home in Khomein that his family would own until the late twentieth century.:18: (oh my god , poor nation) Khomeini's father was murdered when he was still an infant. Khomeini's supporters assert that Khomeini's father was killed by Reza Shah , however this Shah would not come to power for another twenty-six years. Many historians today believe his father may have been the victim of a local dispute. Khomeini's mother and one of his aunts proceeded to raise him until 1918, when both of them died. Ruhollah Khomeini began to study the Qur'an , Isam's holiest book, and elementary Persian at age six . The following year, he began to attend a local school, where he learned mathematics, science, geography, and other traditional subjects. Throughout his childhood, he would continue his religious and secular education with the assistance of his relatives, including his mother's cousin, Ja'far, and his elder brother, Morteza Pasandideh.After World War I arrangements were made for him to study at the Islamic seminary in Esfahan, but he was attracted instead to the seminary in Arak , under the leadership of Ayatollah Abdul Karim Haeri Yazdi . In 1920, Khomeini moved to Arak and commenced his studies . The following year, Ayatollah Haeri Yazdi transferred the Islamic seminary to the holy city of Qom , southwest of Tehran, and invited his students to follow. Khomeini accepted the invitation, moved , and took up residence at the Dar al-Shafa school in Qom. Khomeini's studies included Islamic law ( Sharia ) and jurisprudence (fight), but by that time, Khomeini had also acquired an interest in poetry and philosophy ( Irfan ). So, upon arriving in Qom, Khomeini sought the guidance of Mirza Ali Akbar Yazdi, a scholar of philosophy and mysticism. Yazdi died in 1924, but Khomeini would continue to pursue his interest in philosophy with two other teachers, Javad Aqa Maleki Tabrizi and Rafi'i Qazvini. However, perhaps Khomeini's biggest influences were yet another teacher, Mirza Muhammad 'Ali Shahabadi, and a variety of historic Sufi mystics , including Mulla sadra and Ibn Arabi


Ruhollah Khomeini was a lecturer at Najaf and Qum seminaries for decades before he was known in the political scene. He soon became a leading scholar of Shia Islam. He taught political philosophy , Islamic history and ethics. Several of his students (e.g. Morteza Motahhari) later became leading Islamic philosophers and also marja. As a scholar and teacher, Khomeini produced numerous writings on Islamic philosophy, law, and ethics . He showed an exceptional interest in subjects like Philosophy and gnosticism that not only were usually absent from the curriculum of seminaries but were often an object of hostility and suspicion.


:weird:Death and funeral
------------------------
on Saturday, June 3, 1989, at the age of 86. Iranians poured out into the cities and streets to mourn Khomeini's death in a "completely spontaneous and unorchestrated outpouring of grief."


Despite the hundred-degree heat, crushing mobs created an impassable sea of black for miles as they wailed, chanted and rhythmically beat themselves in anguish ... As the hours passed, fire trucks had to be brought in to spray water on the crowd to provide relief from the heat, while helicopters were flown in to ferry the eight killed and more than four hundred injured ... Two million people attended his funeral.
Iranian officials aborted Khomeini’s first funeral, after a large crowd stormed the funeral procession, nearly destroying Khomeini's wooden coffin in order to get a last glimpse of his body. At one point, Khomeini's body actually almost fell to the ground, as the crowd attempted to grab pieces of the death shroud. The second funeral was held under much tighter security. Khomeini's casket was made of steel, and heavily armed security personnel surrounded it. In accordance with Islamic tradition, the casket was only to carry the body to the burial site. Khomeini's grave is now housed within a larger mausoleum complex.






برای مشاهده محتوا ، لطفا وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید

[saber57]

Oh My God! these guys are just 20 but well-known in all over the univers!....seems we gotta a very small world.......!


of course

I agree with you. new generation is very smart and intelligent.they live and think in future

[C. Breezy]

Usher


[ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ] ([ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ])
Usher during a product launch in 2007

Usher Raymond IV (born October 14, 1978), who performs under the mononym Usher, is an American recording artist and actor. He rose to fame in the 1990s, releasing the multi-platinum album My Way (1997) and 8701 (2001). His success continued with the release of his breakthrough album, Confessions (2004), which has sold over ten million copies in the United States, and been certified diamond by the RIAA. To date, he has sold approximately 38 million albums worldwide and has won five Grammy Awards. In 2008, Usher was ranked as the 21st most successful Hot 100 Singles Artist of all-time by Billboard magazine. He is one of the few artists of his generation to be mentioned. According to the Recording Industry Association of America, Usher has sold over 21.5 million albums in the United States.
Aside from recording, Usher ventured in to other business. He had established his own record label, US Records, and is a part owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers franchise. He has also been appearing in films, debuting in the 1998 The Faculty. Usher is married to Tameka Raymond and has two sons and three stepsons.



Early life

Usher was born on October 14, 1978 in Dallas, Texas, the son of Jonetta Patton (née O'Neal) and Usher Raymond III;. Usher spent the majority of his young life in Chattanooga: Jonetta Patton left her husband when Usher was one year old, and they relocated to Chattanooga, where Usher lived with his mother, then-step father, and half-brother, James Lackey, born in 1984. As a child, Usher joined in their local church youth choir in Chattanooga when he was nine years old, as directed by his mother, in which event his grandmother discovered his ability to sing, although it was not until Usher joined a singing group that she considered he could sing professionally. In 1990, he won in a local talent show while attending middle school. In the belief that a city would provide greater opportunities for showcasing his talent, Usher's family moved to Atlanta, Georgia, where there was a more conducive environment for beginning singers. While in Atlanta, Usher attended North Springs High School. Usher's father died in January 2008.

Personal life

In 2001, Usher began dating formerTLC member Rozonda "Chilli" Thomas who had previously had a child with producer Dallas Austin. Their relationship lasted for two years: they broke-up in December 2003, followed by a media frenzy surrounding the personal nature of Usher's fourth album, Confessions. His fans inferred the reason he and Thomas split is due to infidelity on his part, giving allusions to the lyrics of the songs. In an interview on The Bert Show on Atlanta's Q100 in February 2004, Thomas claimed that Usher cheated on her: "Usher did the ultimate no-no to me ... I will never be with him again, and that is that." Usher defended: "... it just didn't work out. But cheating is not what caused the relationship to collide and crash. That ain't what broke it up." Following their break-up, Usher briefly dated English model-actress Naomi Campbell in September 2004.

[ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]

In January 2005 he proposed to his then stylist girlfriend Tameka Foster. In February 2007, Usher announced his engagement. After the sudden cancellation of a planned July wedding due to medical concerns, the two were wed on August 3, 2007 in a private ceremony. Their son Usher Raymond V was born on November 26th of the same year. On December 10, 2008, Tameka gave birth to their second child, Naviyd Ely Raymond. In February 2009, in São Paulo, Brazil, Tameka Raymond suffered a cardiac arrest prior to having cosmetic surgery. The procedure, reportedly liposuction, was never performed, and Raymond was put into a medically induced coma to aid her recovery. She was later transferred to a larger hospital. Usher canceled his performance at the Recording Academy and Clive Davis's pre-Grammy Gala. Davis told party-goers the singer had to bow out due to a "serious injury in the family." After a week of recovery, Raymond's surgeon issued a statement saying that she "is doing very well."

Philanthropy

Usher had founded New Look, a non-profit charity organization which aims to "provide young people with a new look on life through education and real-world experience". Its flagship project, camp New Look, run from July 11 to July 23, 2005 in Clark Atlanta University. In 2006, the charity started an initiative called Our Block, for which it helped rebuild and revitalize city blocks in New Orleans. The project went on one street at a time, and the funding was helped through part of the proceeds of Usher's team-up with Armani Exchange in creating "Love 4 Life" dog tags, which were made available at the company's stores and Web site.

[ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]

In 1999, Usher participated in "Challenge for the Children", a benefit basketball game hosted by American boy band 'N Sync. The event, which was held on the campus of Georgia State University, had raised an estimated $50,000 for several local charities. In 2005, Usher is one among the artists who signed on for a Hurricane Katrina relief concert.

[C. Breezy]

And Also Here's their height :

Chris Brown : 6' 2" (1.88 m)

Rihanna : 5' 8" (1.73 M)

Usher : 5' 8½ (1.74)

:10:

[دل تنگم]

Real Name: Eric Patrick Clapton

Occupation: Musician, Guitarist

Date of Birth: March 30, 1945

Place of Birth: Ripley, England, U.K.

Sign: Sun in Aries, Moon in Scorpio

Education: Expelled from Kingston College of Art

Relations: Wife: Melia McEnery; Ex-wife: Pattie Boyd Harrison; Son: Conor (deceased); Daughters: Ruth Patricia-Clapton (Born 11th Jan 1985); Julie Rose Clapton (Born 15th Jun 2001), Ella Mae Clapton (Born 14th Jan 2003), Sophie Clapton (Born 1st Feb 2005)


[ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]


IN the late 1960s, one of the most prominent pieces of graffiti seen in London and New York was "Clapton is God." Thirty years later, the stalwart guitarist and singer continues to hold the initiated enthralled, and a fair share of his present-day fans weren't even born when those words of worship were emblazoned on public edifices. Clapton's meandering and groundbreaking musical career has been punctuated by extreme personal hardship and tragedy. Through the emotional truth of his music, he has sought refuge and release from the suffering of drug and alcohol addiction, personal relationships gone awry, and the deaths of several loved ones.


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Eric Patrick Clapton CBE (born 30 March 1945) is an English blues-rock guitarist, singer, songwriter and composer. Clapton has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Yardbirds, of Cream, and as a solo performer, being the only person to be inducted three times. Often viewed by critics and fans alike as one of the greatest guitarists of all time,[2] Clapton was ranked fourth in Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time"[3] and #53 on their list of the Immortals: 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.[4]
Although Clapton has varied his musical style throughout his career, it has always remained grounded in the blues. Yet, in spite of this focus, he is credited as an innovator in a wide variety of genres. These include blues-rock (with John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers and the Yardbirds) and psychedelic rock (with Cream). Additionally, Clapton's chart success was not limited to the blues, with chart-toppers in Delta Blues (Me and Mr. Johnson), pop ("Change the World") and reggae (Bob Marley's "I Shot the Sheriff"). One of his most successful recordings was the hit love song "Layla," which he played with the band Derek and the Dominos, and Robert Johnson's "Crossroads", which has been his staple song since his days with Cream.



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Career

Early years

Clapton was born in Ripley, Surrey, England, the son of 17-year-old Patricia Molly Clapton and Edward Walter Fryer, a 25-year-old soldier from Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Fryer shipped off to war prior to Clapton's birth and then returned to Canada. Clapton grew up with his grandmother, Rose, and her second husband Jack, believing they were his parents and that his mother was his older sister. Their surname was Clapp, which has given rise to the widespread but erroneous belief that Clapton's real surname is Clapp (Reginald Cecil Clapton is the name of Rose's first husband, Eric Clapton's maternal grandfather). Years later, his mother married another Canadian soldier, moved to Canada and left young Eric with his grandparents in distant Surbiton. Clapton received an acoustic Hoyer guitar, made in Germany, for his 13th birthday, but found learning the steel-stringed instrument very difficult and nearly gave up because the action of the guitar was horrible. Despite his frustrations, he was influenced by the blues from an early age and practiced long hours to learn chords and copy the music of blues artists that he listened to on his Grundig Cub tape recorder.

After leaving school in 1961, Clapton studied at the Kingston College of Art but was dismissed at the end of the academic year because his focus remained on music rather than art. Around this time Clapton began busking around Kingston, Richmond and the West End of London.[5] When he was 17 years old Clapton joined his first band, an early British R&B group, called "The Roosters". He stayed with this band from January through August 1963. In October of that year, Clapton did a brief seven gig stint with the Engineers.[6]

1960s


The Yardbirds and the Bluesbreakers

Main articles: The Yardbirds and John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers

"Got Love If You Want It"

20 second sample of the song "Got Love if You Want It" as performed by The Yardbirds
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In 1963, Clapton joined The Yardbirds, a blues-influenced rock and roll band, and stayed with them until March 1965. Synthesizing influences from Chicago blues and leading blues guitarists such as Buddy Guy, Freddie King and B. B. King, Clapton forged a distinctive style and rapidly became one of the most talked-about guitarists in the British music scene.[7] The band initially played Chess/Checker/Vee-Jay blues numbers and began to attract a large cult following when they took over the Rolling Stones' residency at the Crawdaddy Club in Richmond. They toured England with American bluesman Sonny Boy Williamson II; a joint LP, recorded in December 1963, was issued belatedly under both their names, in 1965. In March 1965, just as Clapton left the band, the Yardbirds had their first major hit, "For Your Love", on which Clapton played guitar.

It was during this time period that Clapton's Yardbirds rhythm guitarist Chris Dreja recalled that whenever Clapton broke a guitar string during a concert, he would stay on stage and replace it. The English audiences would wait out the delay by doing what is called a "slow handclap". Clapton told his official biographer, Ray Coleman, that, "My nickname of 'Slowhand' came from Giorgio Gomelsky. He coined it as a good pun. He kept saying I was a fast player, so he put together the slow handclap phrase into Slowhand as a play on words".[8]

Still obstinately dedicated to blues music, Clapton was strongly offended by the Yardbirds' new pop-oriented direction, partly because, "For Your Love", had been written by pop songwriter-for-hire Graham Gouldman, who had also written hits for teen pop outfit Herman's Hermits and harmony pop band The Hollies. Clapton recommended fellow guitarist Jimmy Page as his replacement; but, Page was at that time unwilling to relinquish his lucrative career as a freelance studio musician, so Page in turn recommended Clapton's successor, Jeff Beck.[7] While Beck and Page played together in the Yardbirds, the trio of Beck, Page, and Clapton were never in the group together. However, the trio did appear on the 12-date benefit tour for Action for Research into Multiple Sclerosis, as well as on the album Guitar Boogie

Clapton joined John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, in April 1965, only to quit a few months later. In the summer of 1965, he left for Greece with a band called The Glands which included his old friend Ben Palmer on piano. In November 1965, he rejoined John Mayall. It was during his second Bluesbreakers' stint that his passionate playing established Clapton's name as the best blues guitarist on the club circuit. Although Clapton gained world fame for his playing on the immensely influential album, Blues Breakers, this album was not released until Clapton had left the Bluesbreakers for good. Having swapped his Fender Telecaster and Vox AC30 amp for a 1960 Gibson Les Paul Standard guitar and Marshall amplifier, Clapton's sound and playing inspired a well-publicised graffito that deified him with the famous slogan, "Clapton is God". The phrase was spray-painted by an admirer on a wall in an Islington Underground station in the autumn of 1967. The graffiti was captured in a now-famous photograph, in which a dog is urinating on the wall. Clapton is well reported to have been embarrassed by the slogan, saying in The South Bank Show profile of him made in 1987, "I never accepted that I was the greatest guitar player in the world. I always wanted to be the greatest guitar player in the world, but that's an ideal, and I accept it as an ideal". The phrase began to appear in other areas of Islington throughout the mid-60s.[9]


Cream

Main article: Cream (band)
"Sunshine Of Your Love"

20 second sample of the song Sunshine Of Your Love as performed by Cream
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Clapton left the Bluesbreakers in July 1966 (to be replaced by Peter Green) and formed Cream, one of the earliest supergroups. Cream was also one of the earliest "power trios", with Jack Bruce on bass (also of Manfred Mann, the Bluesbreakers and the Graham Bond Organization) and Ginger Baker on drums (another member of the GBO). Before the formation of Cream, Clapton was all but unknown in the United States; he left the Yardbirds before "For Your Love" hit the American Top Ten, and had yet to perform there.[10] During his time with Cream, Clapton began to develop as a singer, songwriter and guitarist, though Bruce took most of the lead vocals and wrote the majority of the material with lyricist Pete Brown.[11] Cream's first gig was an unofficial performance at the Twisted Wheel in Manchester on 29 July 1966 before their full debut two nights later at the National Jazz and Blues Festival in Windsor. Cream established its enduring legend with the high-volume blues jamming and extended solos of their live shows.

In early 1967, Clapton's status as Britain's top guitarist was rivaled by the emergence of Jimi Hendrix, an acid rock-infused guitarist who used wailing feedback and effects pedals to create new sounds for the instrument. Hendrix attended a performance of the newly formed Cream at the Central London Polytechnic on 1 October 1966, during which Hendrix sat in on a shattering double-timed version of "Killing Floor". In return, top UK stars including Clapton, Pete Townshend, the Rolling Stones and the Beatles avidly attended Hendrix's early club performances. Hendrix's arrival had an immediate and major effect on the next phase of Clapton's career, although Clapton continued to be recognised in UK music polls as the premier guitarist.

It was with Cream that Clapton first visited the United States. They went to New York in March 1967 for a nine show stand at the RKO Theater. They returned to New York to record Disraeli Gears from 11 May 1967 – 15 May 1967. Cream's repertoire varied from soulful pop ("I Feel Free") to lengthy blues-based instrumental jams ("Spoonful") and featured Clapton's searing guitar lines, Bruce's soaring vocals and prominent, fluid bass playing. Baker's powerful, polyrhythmic jazz-influenced drumming backed up Clapton and Bruce, securing Cream as a power trio

In 28 months, Cream had become a commercial success, selling millions of records and playing throughout the US and Europe. They redefined the instrumentalist's role in rock and were one of the first blues-rock bands to emphasise musical virtuosity and lengthy jazz-style improvisation sessions. Their U.S. hit singles include "Sunshine of Your Love" (#5, 1968), "White Room" (#6, 1968) and "Crossroads" (#28, 1969) - a live version of Robert Johnson's "Cross Road Blues." Although Cream was hailed as one of the greatest groups of its day, and the adulation of Clapton as a guitar hero reached new heights, the supergroup was destined to be short-lived. The legendary infighting between Bruce and Baker and growing tensions among all three members eventually led to Cream's demise. Another significant factor was a strongly critical Rolling Stone review of a concert of the group's second headlining U.S. tour, which affected Clapton profoundly.

Cream's farewell album, "Goodbye", featured live performances recorded live at The Forum, Los Angeles, 19 October 1968, and was released shortly after Cream disbanded in 1968; it also featured the studio single "Badge", co-written by Clapton and George Harrison, whom he had met and become friends with after the Beatles had shared a bill with the Clapton-era Yardbirds at the London Palladium. The close friendship between Clapton and Harrison resulted in Clapton's playing on Harrison's "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" from the Beatles' White Album. By all accounts the presence of an outsider, especially of Clapton's calibre, had the effect of bringing peace to the disharmonious band. In the same year of release as the White Album, Harrison released his solo debut Wonderwall Music that became the first of many Harrison solo records to feature Clapton on guitar, who would go largely uncredited due to contractual restraints. The pair would often play live together as each other's guest. A year after Harrison's death in 2001, Clapton helped organise the tribute concert, for which he was musical director.
Since their 1968 breakup, Cream briefly reunited in 1993 to perform at the ceremony inducting them into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. A full-scale reunion of the legendary trio took place in May 2005, with Clapton, Bruce, and Baker playing four sold-out concerts at London's Royal Albert Hall (the scene of their 1968 farewell shows) and three more at New York's Madison Square Garden that October. Recordings from the London shows were released on CD, LP, and DVD in September/December 2005.

Blind Faith & Delaney and Bonnie and Friends

Main articles: Blind Faith and Delaney and Bonnie and Friends
"Presence Of The Lord"

29 second sample of the song "Presence Of The Lord as performed by Blind Faith
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A desultory spell in a second super group, the short-lived Blind Fait (1969), which was composed of Cream drummer Ginger Baker, Steve Winwood of Traffic and Ric Grech of Family, resulted in one LP and one arena-circuit tour. The super group debuted before 100,000 fans in London's Hyde Park on 7 June 1969. They later performed several dates in Scandinavia and began a sold-out American tour in July before their one and only album was released. The LP Blind Faith was recorded in such haste that side two consisted of just two songs, one of them a 15-minute jam entitled "Do What You Like". The album's jacket image of a topless pubescent girl was deemed controversial in the United States and was replaced by a photograph of the band. Blind Faith dissolved after less than seven months. While Winwood returned to Traffic, by now Clapton was tired of both the spotlight and the hype that had surrounded Cream and Blind Faith.

Clapton decided to step into the background for a time, touring as a sideman with the American group Delaney and Bonnie and Friends, who had been the support act for Blind Faith's U.S. tour. He also played two dates that fall with The Plastic Ono Band. Clapton became close friends with Delaney Bramlett, who encouraged him in his singing and writing. Using the Bramletts' backing group and an all-star cast of session players (including Leon Russell and Stephen Stills), Clapton recorded his first solo album during two brief tour hiatuses, fittingly named Eric Clapton. The album included the Bramlett composition, "Bottle Of Red Wine" and "Let It Rain". It also yielded the unexpected U.S. #18 hit, J. J. Cale's "After Midnight". Clapton went with Delaney and Bonnie from the stage to the studio with the Dominos to record George Harrison's All Things Must Pass in spring 1970. During this busy period, Clapton also recorded with other artists including Dr. John, Leon Russell, Plastic Ono Band, Billy Preston and Ringo Starr


1970s


Derek and the Dominos

Main article: Derek and the Dominos

"Layla"

27 second sample of the song Layla as performed Derek and the Dominos
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Taking over Delaney & Bonnie's rhythm section—Bobby Whitlock (keyboards, vocals), Carl Radle (bass) and Jim Gordon (drums)—Clapton formed a new band which was intended to counteract the "star" cult that had grown up around him and show that he could be a member of an ensemble.[12] The band was called "Eric Clapton and Friends" at first, and the name "Derek and the Dominos" was an accident, which occurred when the band's provisional name of "Eric and the Dynamos" was misread as Derek and the Dominos.[13] Clapton's biography, though, argues that Ashton told Clapton to call the band "Del and the Dominos", Del being his nickname for Clapton. Del and Eric were combined and the final name became "Derek and the Dominos".[14]
"Cocaine"

29 second sample of the song "Cocaine" as performed by Eric Clapton
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Clapton's close friendship with George Harrison had brought him into contact with Harrison's wife Pattie Boyd, with whom he became deeply infatuated. When she spurned his advances, Clapton's unrequited affections prompted most of the material for the Dominos' album Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs. This album contained the monster-hit single, love song "Layla", inspired by the classical Azerbaijani poet Nizami Ganjavi's The Story of Layla and Majnun, a copy of which his friend Ian Dallas had given him. The book moved Clapton profoundly as it was the tale of a young man who fell hopelessly in love with a beautiful, unavailable woman and who went crazy because he could not marry her.[15]

Working at Criteria Studios in Miami with Atlantic Records producer Tom Dowd, who had worked with Clapton on Cream's Disraeli Gears, the band recorded a double-album. The two parts of "Layla" were recorded in separate sessions: the opening guitar section was recorded first, and for the second section, laid down several months later, drummer Jim Gordon composed and played the elegiac piano part.[14] The Layla LP was actually recorded by a five-piece version of the group, thanks to the unforeseen inclusion of guitarist Duane Allman of The Allman Brothers Band. A few days into the Layla sessions, Dowd—who was also producing the Allmans—invited Clapton to an Allman Brothers outdoor concert in Miami. The two guitarists met first onstage, then played all night in the studio and became friends. Duane first added his slide guitar to "Tell the Truth" on 28 August as well as "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out". In four days, the five-piece Dominos recorded "Key to the Highway", "Have You Ever Loved a Woman", and "Why Does Love Got to be So Sad". When September came around, Duane briefly left the sessions for gigs with his own band, and the four-piece Dominos recorded "I Looked Away", "Bell Bottom Blues", and "Keep on Growing." Duane returned to record "I am Yours", "Anyday", and "It's Too Late." On the 9th, they recorded Hendrix's "Little Wing" and the title track. The following day, the final track, "Thorn Tree in the Garden" was recorded.[16]

The album was heavily blues-influenced and featured a combination of the twin guitars of Allman and Clapton, with Allman's incendiary slide-guitar a key ingredient of the sound. Many critics would later notice that Clapton played best when in a band composed of dual guitars; working with another guitarist kept him from getting "sloppy and lazy and this was undeniably the case with Duane Allman."[14] It showcased some of Clapton's strongest material to date, as well as arguably some of his best guitar playing, with Whitlock also contributing several superb numbers, and his powerful, soul-influenced voice.[17]

Tragedy dogged the group throughout its brief career. During the sessions, Clapton was devastated by news of the death of Jimi Hendrix; eight days previously the band had cut a blistering version of "Little Wing" as a tribute to him which was added to the album. On 17 September 1970, one day before Hendrix's death, Clapton had purchased a left-handed Stratocaster that he had planned to give to Hendrix as a birthday gift. Adding to Clapton's woes, the Layla album received only lukewarm reviews upon release. The shaken group undertook a U.S. tour without Allman, who had returned to the Allman Brothers Band. Despite Clapton's later admission that the tour took place amidst a veritable blizzard of drugs and alcohol, it resulted in the surprisingly strong live double album In Concert.[18] The band had recorded several tracks for a second album in London during the spring of 1971 (five of which were released on the Eric Clapton box-set Crossroads), but the results were mediocre.
Tom Dowd and Duane Allman were not there to help them and Derek and the Dominos soon disintegrated messily in London. Allman was killed in a motorcycle accident on 29 October 1971. Although Radle would remain Clapton's bass player until the summer of 1979 (Radle died in May 1980 from the effects of alcohol and narcotics), the split between Clapton and Whitlock was apparently a bitter one, and it was not until 2003 that they worked together again (Clapton guested on Whitlock's appearance on the Later with Jools Holland show). Another tragic footnote to the Dominos story was the fate of drummer Jim Gordon, who was an undiagnosed schizophrenic and years later murdered his mother during a psychotic episode. Gordon was confined to 16-years-to-life imprisonment, later being moved to a mental institution, where he remains today.[11]


Solo career


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Eric Clapton Performing in 1974



Clapton's career successes in the 1970s were in stark contrast to his personal life, which was troubled by romantic longings and drug and alcohol addiction. In addition to his (temporarily) unrequited and intense attraction to Pattie Boyd, he withdrew from recording and touring to isolation in his Surrey, England residence. There he nursed his heroin addiction, resulting in a career hiatus interrupted only by the Concert for Bangladesh in August 1971 (where he passed out on stage, was revived, and continued the show).[7] In January 1973, The Who's Pete Townshend organised a comeback concert for Clapton at London's Rainbow Theatre aptly titled the "Rainbow Concert" to help Clapton kick his addiction. Clapton would return the favour by playing 'The Preacher' in Ken Russell's film version of The Who's Tommy in 1975; his appearance in the film (performing "Eyesight To The Blind") is notable as he is clearly wearing a fake beard in some shots, the result of deciding to shave off his real beard after the initial takes in an attempt to force the director to remove his earlier scene from the movie and leave the set.[14]

In 1974, now partnered with Pattie (they would not actually marry until 1979) and no longer using heroin (although starting to drink heavily), Clapton put together a more low-key touring band that included Radle, Miami guitarist George Terry, keyboardist Dick Sims, drummer Jamie Oldaker and vocalists Yvonne Elliman and Marcy Levy (better known as Marcella Detroit of 1980s pop duo Shakespears Sister). With this band Clapton recorded 461 Ocean Boulevard (1974), an album with an emphasis on more compact songs and fewer guitar solos; the cover-version of "I Shot The Sheriff" was Clapton's first #1 hit and was important in bringing reggae and the music of Bob Marley to a wider audience. The 1975 album There's One in Every Crowd continued the trend of 461. The album's original title The World's Greatest Guitar Player (There's One In Every Crowd) was changed before pressing, as it was felt its ironic intention would be misunderstood. The band toured the world and subsequently released the 1975 live LP, E.C. Was Here. Clapton continued to release albums and toured regularly. Highlights of the era include No Reason to Cry, whose collaborators included Bob Dylan and The Band, and Slowhand, which featured "Wonderful Tonight", another song inspired by Pattie Boyd, and a second J.J. Cale cover, "Cocaine."

During an August 1976 concert in Birmingham, Clapton provoked a controversy that has continued to follow him when he made pointed remarks from the stage in support of British politician Enoch Powell's efforts to restrict immigration to the U.K.




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Clapton performing live at the Eishalle theater of Wetzikon, Switzerland, 19 June 1977


1980s

In 1981, Clapton was invited by producer Martin Lewis to appear at the Amnesty International benefit The Secret Policeman's Other Ball. Clapton accepted the invitation and teamed up with Jeff Beck to perform a series of duets—reportedly their first-ever billed stage collaboration. Three of the performances were released on the album of the show and one of the songs was featured in the film of the show. The performances heralded a return to form and prominence for Clapton in the new decade. Many factors had influenced Clapton's comeback, including his "deepening commitment to Christianity", to which he had converted prior to his heroin addiction.[19][20]

In 1984, he performed on Pink Floyd member Roger Waters' solo album, The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking and went on tour with Waters following the release of the album. Since then Waters and Clapton have had a close relationship. In 2005 they performed together for the Tsunami Relief Fund. In 2006 they performed at the Highclere Castle, in aid of the Countryside Alliance, playing two set pieces of "Wish You Were Here" and "Comfortably Numb". As Clapton recovered from his addictions, his album output continued in the 1980s, including two produced with Phil Collins, 1985's Behind the Sun, which produced the hits "Forever Man" and "She's Waiting", and 1986's August.

August, a polished release that was suffused with Collins's trademark drum and horn sound, became Clapton's biggest seller in the UK to date and matched his highest chart position, number 3. The album's first track, the hit "It's In The Way That You Use It", was also featured in the Tom Cruise-Paul Newman movie The Color of Money. The horn-peppered "Run" echoed Collins' "Sussudio" and rest of the producer's Genesis/solo output, while "Tearing Us Apart" (with Tina Turner) and the bitter "Miss You" echoed Clapton's angry sound. This rebound kicked off Clapton's two-year period of touring with Collins and their August collaborates, bassist Nathan East and keyboard player/songwriter Greg Phillinganes. Despite his own earlier battles with alcoholism, Clapton remade "After Midnight" as a single and a promotional track for the Michelob beer brand, which had also marketed earlier songs by Collins and Steve Winwood. Clapton won a British Academy Television Award for his collaboration with Michael Kamen on the score for the 1985 BBC television thriller serial Edge of Darkness. In 1989, Clapton released Journeyman, an album which covered a wide range of styles including blues, jazz, soul and pop. Collaborators included George Harrison, Phil Collins, Daryl Hall, Chaka Khan, Mick Jones, David Sanborn and Robert Cray.


Tragedies

In 1984, while still married to Pattie Boyd, Clapton began a year-long relationship with Yvonne Kelly. The two had a daughter, Ruth, in January 1985. Clapton and Kelly did not make any public announcement about the birth of their daughter, and she was not publicly revealed as his child until 1991.[21] Boyd criticized Clapton because he had not revealed the child's existence.[22]

Hurricane Hugo hit Montserrat in 1989 and this resulted in the closure of Sir George Martin and John Burgess's recording studio AIR Montserrat, where Kelly was Managing Director. Kelly and Ruth moved back to England, and the myth of Eric's secret daughter began as a result of newspaper articles published at the time.[21] Clapton and Boyd divorced in 1989 following his affair with Italian model Lori Del Santo, who gave birth to their son Conor in August 1986.[23] Boyd herself was never able to conceive children, despite attempts at in vitro fertilization.[22][23] Their divorce was granted on grounds of "infidelity and unreasonable behaviour."[22]

The early 1990s saw tragedy enter Clapton's life again. On 27 August 1990, fellow guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan, who was touring with Clapton, and two members of their road crew were killed in a helicopter crash between concerts. Then, on 20 March 1991, Conor, who was four years of age, died when he fell from the 53rd-story window of his mother's friend's New York City apartment, landing on the roof of an adjacent four-story building. Clapton's grief was expressed in the song "Tears in Heaven", which was co-written by Will Jennings. He received a total of six Grammys that year for the single "Tears in Heaven" and the Unplugged album.


1990s and 2000s

In October 1992, Clapton was among the dozens of artists performing at the Bob Dylan 30th Anniversary Concert. Recorded at Madison Square Garden in New York City, the live two-disk CD captured a show full of celebrities performing classic Dylan songs, before ending with a few performances from Bob Dylan himself. Despite the presence of 10 other guitarists on stage, including George Harrison, Neil Young, Roger McGuinn, Steve Cropper, Tom Petty, and Dylan, Clapton played the lead on a nearly 7-minute version of Dylan's "Knockin' on Heaven's Door," one of Clapton's early hit singles, as part of the finale.

While Unplugged featured Clapton playing acoustic guitar, his 1994 album From the Cradle contained new versions of old blues standards highlighted by his electric guitar playing. The album showed that Clapton could still effectively play blues along the more mainstream music featured in his other records. Clapton's 1996 recording of the Wayne Kirkpatrick/Gordon Kennedy/Tommy Sims tune "Change the World" (featured in the soundtrack of the movie Phenomenon) won a Grammy award for song of the year in 1997, the same year he recorded Retail Therapy (an album of electronic music with Simon Climie under the pseudonym TDF). The following year, Clapton released the album Pilgrim, the first record featuring brand new material for almost a decade.[20] Clapton finished the twentieth century with critically-acclaimed collaborations with Carlos Santana and B. B. King.

In 1996 Clapton had a relationship with singer/songwriter Sheryl Crow. They remain friends, and Clapton appeared as a guest on Sheryl Crow's Central Park Concert when the duo performed a Cream hit single "White Room". Later, Clapton and Crow performed an alternate version of "Tulsa Time" with other guitar legends at the Crossroads Guitar Festival in June 2007. In 1999 Clapton, then 54, met 23-year-old store clerk Melia McEnery in Los Angeles while working on an album with B. B. King. They married in 2002 at St Mary Magdalen church in Clapton's birthplace, Ripley, Surrey, and as of 2005 have three daughters, Julie Rose (June 13, 2001), Ella May (January 14, 2003), and Sophie Belle (February 1, 2005). He wrote the song "Three Little Girls", featured on his 2006 album The Road to Escondido, about the contentment he has found in his home life with his wife and daughters.

Following the release of the 2001 record Reptile, Eric performed "Layla" and "While My Guitar Gently Weeps at the Party at the Palace in 2002. In November of that year he organised and hosted the Concert for George at the Royal Albert Hall, a tribute to George Harrison, who had died a year earlier of cancer. The concert featured Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Jeff Lynne, Tom Petty, Ravi Shankar, and others. In 2004, Clapton released two records packed full of covers by legendary bluesman Robert Johnson, Me & Mr Johnson. The same year Rolling Stone Magazine ranked Clapton #53 on their list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time".[24]

In May 2005, Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker reunited as Cream for a series of concerts at the Royal Albert Hall in London. Concert recordings were released on CD and DVD. Later, Cream performed in New York at Madison Square Garden. Back Home, Clapton's first album of new original material in nearly five years, was released on Reprise Records on 30 August. In 2006 he invited Derek Trucks and Doyle Bramhall II to join his band for his 2006-2007 world tour. Trucks is the third member of The Allman Brothers Band to support Clapton, the second being pianist/keyboardist Chuck Leavell who appeared on the MTV Unplugged album and the 24 Nights performances at the Royal Albert Hall theatre of London (RAH) in 1990 and 1991, as well as Clapton's 1992 U.S. tour.

On 20 May, 2006, Clapton performed with Queen drummer Roger Taylor and former Pink Floyd bassist Roger Waters at the Highclere Castle, in support of the Countryside Alliance. On 13 August 2006, Clapton made a guest appearance at the Bob Dylan concert in Columbus, Ohio, playing guitar on three songs in Jimmie Vaughan's opening act.[25] A collaboration with guitarist J. J. Cale, titled The Road to Escondido, was released on 7 November 2006, featuring Derek Trucks and Billy Preston. The 14-track CD was produced and recorded by the duo in August 2005 in California. The chemistry between Trucks and Clapton convinced him to invite The Derek Trucks Band to open for Clapton's set on his 2007 Crossroads Tour, with Trucks remaining on set afterward, performing with Clapton's band throughout his performances.
The rights to Clapton's official memoirs, written by Christopher Simon Sykes and published in 2007, were sold at the 2005 Frankfurt Book Fair for USD $4 million.[26]



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Eric Clapton playing live in Hyde Park, London on 28th June 2008



According to Rolling Stone Magazine, Clapton is currently working on an album with Robbie Robertson. Robertson performed with Clapton at the Crossroads Guitar Festival, where they played their version of the Bo Diddley song "Who Do You Love". On 28 January 2008 Eric Clapton was announced as the headliner for the Saturday night of Hard Rock Calling 2008 in London's Hyde Park (previously Hyde Park Calling) with support from Sheryl Crow & John Mayer.[27] On February 26, 2008, it was reported that North Korean officials had invited Clapton to play a concert in the communist state.[28] According to reports, Clapton's management received the invitation and passed it on to the singer, who has agreed in principle and suggested it take place sometime in 2009.[29] Clapton's management, however, have so far refused to confirm if this is the case. If Clapton accepts the invitation, he will be the first western rock star to play there.

Clapton's 2008 Summer Tour began on the 3rd of May at the Ford Amphitheatre,Tampa Bay, Florida, and then moved to Canada, Ireland, England, Norway, Denmark, Poland, Germany and Monaco.



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Eric Clapton (4th from left) and his band live in 2007



In 2007, Clapton learned more about his father, a Canadian soldier who left the UK after the war. Although Clapton's grandparents eventually told him the truth about his parentage, he only knew that his father's name was Edward Fryer. This was a source of disquiet for Clapton, as witnessed by his 1998 song "My Father's Eyes". A Montreal journalist named Michael Woloschuk researched Canadian Armed Forces service records and tracked down members of Fryer's family, finally piecing together the story. He learned that Clapton's father was Edward Walter Fryer, born 21 March 1920, in Montreal and died 15 May 1985 in Newmarket, Ontario. Fryer was a musician (piano and saxophone) and a lifelong drifter, who was married several times, had several children and apparently never knew that he was the father of Eric Clapton.[30] Clapton thanked Woloschuk in an encounter at Macdonald Cartier Airport, in Ottawa, Canada.[31]

In February 2008, Clapton performed with his long-time friend Steve Winwood at Madison Square Garden and helped him record the single "Dirty City" on Winwood's album Nine Lives. In September 2008, Clapton performed at a private charity fundraiser for The Countryside Alliance at Floridita in Soho, London, that included such guests as the London Mayor Boris Johnson.

March, 2009 found Clapton performing with The Allman Brothers Band (amongst other notable guests), celebrating their 40th year, in tribute to the late Duane Allman on their annual run at the Beacon Theater, with Butch Trucks commenting that "this performance wasn't the typical Allman Brothers experience, given the number and differences of the guests who were invited to perform. "Eric Clapton taught us!", Trucks said. Songs like "In Memory of Elizabeth Reed", were punctuated with others, such as "The Weight", with Levon Helm; Johnny Winter sitting in on Hendrix's "Red House" and of course, "Layla".

Influences

Clapton has performed songs by myriad artists, most notably Robert Johnson and J. J. Cale. Other artists Clapton has covered include Bob Marley, Bo Diddley and Bob Dylan. He cites Freddie King, B. B. King, Albert King, Buddy Guy, Hubert Sumlin and primarily Robert Johnson as major influences of his guitar playing. In his book, Discovering Robert Johnson (which he co-authored with several other writers), Clapton called Johnson "...the most important blues musician who ever lived. He was true, absolutely, to his own vision, and as deep as I have gotten into the music over the last 30 years, I have never found anything more deeply soulful than Robert Johnson. His music remains the most powerful cry that I think you can find in the human voice, really. ... it seemed to echo something I had always felt.|Eric Clapton|Discovering Robert Johnson[32] In 1974, Clapton persuaded Freddie King to sign with RSO, Clapton's record label at the time. He has recorded more than six of J. J. Cale's originals and has put out an album with him. Other artists with whom Clapton has made collaborations include Frank Zappa, B. B. King, George Harrison, Santana, Ringo Starr, Roger Waters, John Lennon and The Plastic Ono Band. Clapton also collaborated with singer/songwriter John Mayer on his 2006 album release, Continuum. Mayer cites Clapton in his liner notes Eric Clapton knows I steal from him and is still cool with it. Clapton and Mayer wrote several songs together which have yet to be released. Clapton's influence inspired Mayer to write "I Don't Trust Myself (With Loving You)" which loosely holds characteristics of Clapton's musical and fashion style.The musicians especially guitarists that Clapton had influenced were: Eddie Van Halen, John Mayer, Slash, Brad Paisley, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Joe Don Rooney, Jon Buckland, Alex Lifeson, Quinn Sullivan

Guitars

"Steppin' Out"

Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton, 1966: Clapton's sustained, distorted Les Paul tone proved highly influential.

"Outside Woman Blues"

Disraeli Gears, 1967: With Cream, Clapton produces both treble-heavy sound and his famously thick "woman tone".

"White Room"

Wheels of Fire, 1968: Along with contemporaries like Jimi Hendrix, Clapton helped popularise the wah-wah pedal.

"Let it Rain" (live)

Live at the Fillmore, 1970: With Derek and the Dominos, Clapton began to use the sharper tone of the Fender Stratocaster.

"Cocaine"

Slowhand, 1977: Throughout his solo career in the 1970s and 80s, Clapton continued to use his favorite Stratocaster, "Blackie".

"Bad Love"

Journeyman, 1989: From the end of the 80s on, Clapton has favored the "compressed" tone of his signature model Stratocaster.

"Layla" (unplugged)

Unplugged, 1994: For his popular acoustic playing in the 1990s, Clapton used Martin steel-string acoustics

Clapton's choice of electric guitars has been as notable as the man himself, and alongside Hank Marvin, The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix, Clapton exerted a crucial and widespread influence in popularising particular models of the electric guitar. [33] With the Yardbirds, Clapton played a Fender Telecaster, a Fender Jazzmaster and a 1964 Cherry-Red Gibson ES-335. He became exclusively a Gibson player for a period beginning in mid-1965, when he purchased a used Gibson Les Paul Sunburst Standard guitar from a local guitar store in London. Clapton commented on the slim profile of the neck, which would indicate it as a 1960 model.[34]
Early during his stint in Cream, Clapton's first Les Paul Standard was stolen. He continued to play Les Pauls exclusively with Cream (one bought from Andy Summers was almost identical to the stolen guitar)[35] until 1967 when he acquired his most famous guitar in this period, a 1964 Gibson SG.[36] In early 1967, just before their first US appearance, Clapton's SG, Bruce's Fender VI and Baker's drum head were repainted in psychedelic designs created by the visual art collective known as The Fool. In 1968 Clapton bought a Gibson Firebird and started using the 1964 Cherry-Red Gibson ES-335 again.[36] The aforementioned 1964 ES-335 had a storied career. Clapton used it at the last Cream show in November, 1968 as well as with Blind Faith, played sparingly for slide pieces in the 1970s, heard on Hard Times from Journeyman and the From the Cradle sessions and tour. It was sold for $847,500 at the 2004 auction.[37] Gibson produced a limited run of 250 "Crossroads 335" replicas. The 335 was only the second electric guitar Clapton bought.[38]
Clapton played a refinished red Les Paul on the Beatles' studio recording of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", then gave the guitar to George Harrison. His SG found its way into the hands of George Harrison's friend Jackie Lomax, who subsequently sold it to musician Todd Rundgren for US$500 in 1972. Rundgren restored the guitar and nicknamed it "Sunny", after "Sunshine of Your Love." He retained it until 2000, when he sold it at an auction for US$150,000.[36] At the 1969 Blind Faith concert in Hyde Park, London Clapton played a Fender Custom Telecaster, which was fitted with Brownie's neck.

In late 1969, Clapton made the switch to the Fender Stratocaster. "I had a lot of influences when I took up the Strat. First there was Buddy Holly, and Buddy Guy. Hank Marvin was the first well known person over here in England who was using one, but that wasn't really my kind of music. Steve Winwood had so much credibility, and when he started playing one, I thought, oh, if he can do it, I can do it."[39] First was "Brownie" used during the recording of Eric Clapton which in 1974 became the backup to the most famous of all Clapton's guitars, "Blackie." In November 1970 Eric bought six Fender Stratocasters from the Sho-bud guitar shop in Nashville, Tennessee while on tour with the Dominos. He gave one each to George Harrison, Steve Winwood and Pete Townshend.

He used the best components of the remaining three to create "Blackie", which was Clapton's favourite stage guitar until its retirement in 1985. It was first played live January 13, 1973 at the Rainbow Concert.[40] Clapton called the 1956/57 Strat a "mongrel".[41] On 24 June, 2004, Clapton sold "Blackie" at Christie's Auction House, New York for $959,500 to raise funds for his Crossroads Centre for drug and alcohol addictions. "Brownie" is now on display at the Experience Music Project.[42] The Fender Custom Shop has since produced a limited run of 275 'Blackie' replicas, correct in every detail right down to the 'Duck Brothers' flight case, and artificially aged using Fender's 'Relic' process to simulate years of hard wear. One was presented to Eric upon the model's release.[43]
Another moment involving Clapton's guitars resulted in Hard Rock Café's unique and gigantic collection of memorabilia. In 1971, Clapton, a regular at the original Hard Rock Café in Hyde Park, London, gave a signed guitar to the café to designate his favourite bar stool. Pete Townshend, in turn, donated one of his own guitars, with a note attached: "Mine's as good as his! Love, Pete." From there, the collection of memorabilia grew, resulting in Hard Rock Café's atmosphere.[44] In 1988 Fender honoured Clapton with the introduction of his signature Eric Clapton Stratocaster.[45] These were the first two artist models in the Stratocaster range and since then the artist series has grown to include models inspired both by Clapton's contemporaries such as Rory Gallagher, Mark Knopfler, Jeff Beck, the late Stevie Ray Vaughan, and by those who have influenced him such as Buddy Guy. Clapton uses Ernie Ball Slinky and Super Slinky strings.[46] Clapton has also been honoured with signature-model 000-28EC and 000-42EC acoustic guitars made by the famous American firm of C.F. Martin & Co..[45] His 1939 000-42 Martin that he played on the Unplugged album sold for $791,500 at auction.[37] Clapton plays a custom 000-ECHF Martin these days.

In 1999, Clapton auctioned off some of his guitar collection to raise over $5 million for continuing support of the Crossroads Centre in Antigua, which he founded in 1997.[47] The Crossroads Centre is a treatment base for addictive disorders such as drugs and alcohol. In 2004, Clapton organised and participated in the Crossroads Guitar Festival to benefit the Centre. A second guitar auction, including the "Cream" of Clapton's collection - as well as guitars donated by famous friends - was also held on 24 June 2004. His Lowden acoustic guitar sold for $41,825. The total revenue garnered by this auction at Christie's was US $7,438,624.[37]

Other media appearances

Clapton frequently appears as a guest on the albums of other musicians. For example, he is credited on Dire Straits’ Brothers in Arms album, as he lent Mark Knopfler one of his guitars for the album. He also played lead guitar and synthesizer on The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking, Roger Waters' debut solo album after leaving Pink Floyd. Other media appearances include the Toots & the Maytals album True Love where he played guitar on the track "Pressure Drop". He can also be heard at the beginning of Frank Zappa's album, "We're Only In It For The Money", repeating the phrase, "Are you hung up?" over and over again. In 1985, Clapton appeared on the charity concert Live Aid in Philadelphia with Phil Collins, Tim Renwick, Chris Stainton, Jamie Oldaker, Marcy Levy, Shaun Murphy and Donald 'Duck' Dunn. In 1988 he played with Dire Straits and Elton John at the Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute. Two years later, Dire Straits, Clapton and Elton John made a guest appearance in a charity show held at Knebworth.

On 12 September 1996, Clapton played a party for Armani at New York City's Lexington Armory with Greg Phillinganes, Nathan East and Steve Gadd. Sheryl Crow appeared on one number, performing "Tearing Us Apart", a track from August, which was first performed by Tina Turner during the Prince's Trust All-Star Rock show in 1986. It was Clapton's sole US appearance that year, following an open-air concert at Hyde Park with Dave Bronze, Andy Fairweather-Low, The Kick Horns, Jerry Portnoy, Chris Stainton and backing vocalists Katie Kissoon and Tessa Niles. A video recording from the footage of the Hyde Park concert has been released as a VHS video cassette in 4 August 1997; the DVD version appeared in 20 November 2001.

Clapton was featured in the rock opera film, Tommy as the Preacher. He also appeared in Blues Brothers 2000 as one of the Louisiana Gator Boys. In addition to being in the band, he had a small speaking role. Clapton has also appeared in an advertisement for the Mercedes-Benz G-Wagen.In March 2007, Clapton appeared in an advertisement[48] for RealNetwork's Rhapsody (online music service).

Controversy over remarks on immigration

On 5 August 1976 Clapton provoked an uproar and lingering controversy when he spoke out against increasing immigration during a concert in Birmingham. Visibly intoxicated, Clapton voiced his support of controversial political candidate Enoch Powell and announced on stage that Britain was in danger of becoming a "black colony". Clapton was quoted telling the audience: "I think Enoch's right ... we should send them all back. Throw the wogs out! Keep Britain white!" (the latter phrase was at the time a British National Front slogan).[49] This incident, along with some explicitly pro-fascism remarks made around the same time by David Bowie, were the main catalysts for the creation of Rock Against Racism.

In an interview from October 1976 with Sounds Magazine, Clapton remarked: "I thought it was quite funny actually. I don't know much about politics. I don't even know if it would be good or bad for him to get in. I don't even know who the Prime Minister is now. I just don't know what came over me that night. It must have been something that happened in the day but it came out in this garbled thing...I thought the whole thing was like Monty Python. There's this rock group playing onstage and the singer starts talking about politics. It's so stupid. Those people who paid their money sittin' listening to this madman dribbling on and the band meanwhile getting fidgety thinking 'oh dear'."

In a 2004 interview with Uncut (magazine), Clapton referred to Powell as "outrageously brave", and stated that his "feeling about this has not changed", because the UK is still "... inviting people in as cheap labour and then putting them in ghettos."[50] In 2004, Clapton told an interviewer for Scotland on Sunday, "There's no way I could be a racist. It would make no sense".[51] In his 2007 autobiography, Clapton called himself "deliberately oblivious to it all" and wrote, "I had never really understood or been directly affected by racial conflict... when I listened to music, I was disinterested in where the players came from or what colour their skin was. Interesting, then, that 10 years later, I would be labelled a racist... Since then, I have learnt to keep my opinions to myself. Of course, it might also have had something to do with the fact that Pattie had just been leered at by a member of the Saudi royal family."[52] In a December 2007 interview with Melvin Bragg on The South Bank Show, Clapton reiterated his support for Enoch Powell and again denied that Powell's views were racist.[53]

Awards and honours

Year Award / Recognition
1983 Presented the Silver Clef Award from Princess Michael of Kent for outstanding contribution to British music.[54]

1993 "Tears In Heaven" won three Grammy awards for Song of the Year, Record of the Year, and Male Pop Vocal Performance. Clapton also won Album of the Year and Best Rock Vocal Performance for "Unplugged" and Best Rock Song for "Layla".[55]

1994 Awarded the Order of the British Empire for services to music.[56]

2000 Inducted into the US Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for the third time, this time as a solo artist. He was earlier inducted as a member of the bands Cream and The Yardbirds.[57]

2004 Promoted to CBE, receiving the award from the Princess Royal at Buckingham Palace as part of the New Year's Honours list.[58][59]

Clapton's music in film and TV

Mean Streets (1973) - "I Looked Away"
The Hit (1984) - Score
Back to the Future (1985) - Heaven Is One Step Away
The Color of Money (1986 film) - "It's In The Way That You Use It"
SpaceCamp (1986 film) - "Forever Man" plays when Tate Donovan's character arrives at the Space Camp.
The German car manufacturer Opel and Vauxhall in the UK used the guitar riff of Clapton's Layla in its advertising campaign throughout in 1987-95.
Lethal Weapon 2 (1988) - "Knockin' On Heaven's Door"
Goodfellas (1990) - "Layla" and "Sunshine of Your Love" "Soundtracks for Goodfellas". Internet Movie Database. Retrieved on 2007-02-17.
Rush (1991)_ Clapton wrote the score
Wayne's World (1992) - "Loving your Loving"
Peter's Friends (1992) - "Give Me Strength"
Lethal Weapon 3 (1992) Clapton contributed to the score and co-wrote and co-performed the song "It's Probably Me" with Sting and "Runaway Train" with Elton John.
True Lies (1994) - "Sunshine of Your Love"
Twister (1996 film) (1996) - "Motherless Child"
Phenomenon (1996 film) - "Change the World"
Patch Adams (film) (1998)- "Let It Rain"
Lethal Weapon 4 (1998) - "Pilgrim"
City Of Angels (1998) - "Further On Up The Road"
Runaway Bride (1999) - Blue Eyes Blue
The Story of Us (1999) - "(I) Get Lost" (featured multiple times)
Friends (2000) - The One with the Proposal, Part 2, "Wonderful Tonight"
Dancing At The Blue Iguana (2000) - "River of Tears"
A Knight's Tale (2001) - "Further On Up The Road"
Futurama - episode 30% Iron Chef - "Sunshine of Your Love"
Blow (2001) - "Strange Brew"
Friends (2002) - The One Where Rachel Has a Baby, Part Two, "River of Tears"
The Sopranos in season four episode of the TV crime drama "Whitecaps" (2002)- Tony Soprano is seen listening to "Layla" in his Suburban.
School Of Rock (2003) - "Sunshine Of Your Love"
Starsky & Hutch (2004) - "Cocaine"
Anger Management (film) (2004) - "Strange Brew"
Bad News Bears (2005) - "Cocaine"
Lords of Dogtown (2005) - "Strange Brew"
Lord of War (2005)- "Cocaine"
The Simpsons - "Sunshine of your love"
Fahrenheit 9/11 - "Cocaine"
United States of Tara - "Cocaine"


Discography

Main article: Eric Clapton discography

Band


[ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ] _.jpg/250px-Clapton%2C_Trucks%2C_and_Weeks_and_2007_Crossroads _.jpg
Doyle Bramhall II, Derek Trucks, Steve Jordan, Eric Clapton, Willie Weeks


2006 Tour Band

European Tour

Eric Clapton - guitar, vocals
Doyle Bramhall II - guitar, backing vocals
Derek Trucks - slide guitar, guitar
Chris Stainton - keyboards
Tim Carmon - keyboards
Willie Weeks - bass
Steve Jordan - drums
The Kick Horns (Simon Clarke, Roddy Lorimer, and Tim Sanders) - brass
Michelle John - backing vocals
Sharon White - backing vocals

US / Canada - Eastern Region, Japan, Australia and New Zealand

Eric Clapton - guitar, vocals
Doyle Bramhall II - guitar, backing vocals
Derek Trucks - slide guitar, guitar
Chris Stainton - keyboards
Tim Carmon - keyboards
Willie Weeks - bass
Steve Jordan - drums
Michelle John - backing vocals
Sharon White - backing vocals
Support act for European and US / Canada : The Robert Cray Band

2008 Summer Tour Band

Eastern U.S. / Canada Tour

Eric Clapton (guitar / vocals)
Doyle Bramhall II (guitar / backing vocals)
Chris Stainton (keyboards)
Pino Palladino (bass)
Robert Randolph (slide guitar)
Ian Thomas (drums)
Sharon White (backing vocals)
Michelle John (backing vocals)


Europe Tour

Eric Clapton (guitar / vocals)
Doyle Bramhall II (guitar / backing vocals)
Chris Stainton (keyboards)
Willie Weeks (bass)
Abe Laboriel, Jr. (drums)
Sharon White (backing vocals)
Michelle John (backing vocals)

2009 Tour Band

Japan / Australia / New Zealand Tour

Eric Clapton (guitar / vocals)
Doyle Bramhall II (guitar / backing vocals)
Chris Stainton (keyboards)
Willie Weeks (bass)
Abe Laboriel, Jr. (drums)
Sharon White (backing vocals)
Michelle John (backing vocals)


UK / Ireland Tour

Eric Clapton (guitar / vocals)
Andy Fairweather-Low (guitar / backing vocals)
Chris Stainton (keyboards)
Willie Weeks (bass)
Tim Carmon (keyboards)
Steve Gadd (drums)
Sharon White (backing vocals)
Michelle John (backing vocals)

Previous band members
Albert Lee - guitar, vocals, backing vocals
Tim Renwick - guitar
Andy Fairweather-Low - guitar, backing vocals
Phil Palmer - guitar
George Terry - guitar, backing vocals
Mark Knopfler - guitar
Alan Darby - guitar
Greg Phillinganes - keyboards, hammond organ, backing vocals
Billy Preston - Hammond B3 Organ
David Sancious - keyboards, guitar, harmonica, backing vocals
Joe Sample - piano, Wurlitzer
Dick Sims - keyboards
Alan Clark - piano, keyboards
Gary Brooker - keyboards, backing vocals
Chuck Leavell - piano, keyboards, hammond organ
Chris Stainton - piano, keyboards
Donald "Duck" Dunn - bass guitar
Carl Radle - bass guitar, guitar
Nathan East - bass guitar, vocals, backing vocals
Pino Palladino - bass guitar
Dave Bronze - bass guitar
Paulinho Da Costa - percussion
Jim Gordon - drums, piano
Steve Ferrone - drums
Steve Gadd - drums
Roger Hawkins - drums
Jim Keltner - drums
Richie Hayward - drums
Andy Newmark - drums
Jamie Oldaker - drums
Henry Spinetti - drums
Phil Collins - drums, vocals
Ricky Lawson- drums
Ray Cooper - percussion
Yvonne Elliman - vocals, backing vocals, guitar
Katie Kissoon - backing vocals
Marcy Levy - vocals, backing vocals, harmonic
Tessa Niles - backing vocal
Maggie Ryder - backing vocals


References


^ "Rock & Roll Library - Eric Clapton's Releases". List. Rock & Roll Library. . Retrieved on 2008-08-25.

^ "Eric Clapton". Little Steven. Rolling Stone Issue 946. Rolling Stone.

^ "The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All time". Rolling Stone. 2004-03-24. . Retrieved on 2008-08-29.

^ "The Immortals: The First Fifty". Rolling Stone Issue 946. Rolling Stone.

^ Welch, Chris (1994) Extract

^ ""Where's Eric?"". Retrieved on 2008-05-23.

^ a b c Romanowski, Patricia (2003)

^ ""Where's Eric?"". Retrieved on 2007-10-11.

^ ""Where's Eric Website: Nickname"". . Retrieved on 2007-02-17.

^ AllMusic

^ a b Romanowski, Patricia (2003)

^ The Layla Sessions liner notes, page 4.

^ "Derek And The Dominoes". Artistfacts. . Retrieved on 2007-02-17.

^ a b c d Schumacher, Michael (1992)

^ Crazy About "Layla", Eric Clapton Song Inspired by Nizami, 12th century Azerbaijani Poet Azerbaijan International Magazine, Autumn 1998
^ "The Layla Sessions" CD liner notes.

^ Ruhlmann, William. "Derek & the Dominos". Allmusic. Retrieved on 2007-02-17.

^ The Layla Sessions liner notes, page 12.

^ Moritz, Charles (1987)
^ a b Ruhlmann, William. "Eric Clapton". Allmusic. Retrieved on 2007-02-17.

^ a b Daily Mail, The truth about Eric Clapton's 'Secret Daughter'. Consulted on August 12, 2007.

^ a b c The Daily Mail, 'I'd pray Eric would pass out and not touch me': Part 2 of Pattie Boyd's sensational autobiography. Consulted on August 12, 2007.

^ a b Daily Telegraph, It's amazing we're still alive. Consulted on August 12, 2007.

^ "The Immortals". Rolling Stone Issue 946. Rolling Stone. .
^ "God has a summer home in Columbus". UWeekly. 2005-08-15. Retrieved on 2007-03-30.

^ "Joel Rickett on the latest news from the publishing industry". The Guardian. 2005-10-22. Retrieved on 2007-02-17.

^ "Hard Rock Calling"/.

^ "Eric Clapton 'receives North Korean invite'". CNN. 2008-02-26. Retrieved on 2008-02-26.

^ "Clapton asked to play in North Korea". BBC News. 2008-02-26. Retrieved on 2008-02-26.

^ Woloschuk, Michael. "His Father's Eyes". Ottawa Citizen. Retrieved on 2007-02-17.

^ Woloschuk, Michael. "Clapton Thanks Reporter". Canoe Jam. Retrieved on 2007-02-17.

^ Caviness, Crystal; Dan Kimpel, David A. Mitchell Lisa Zhito, Kevin Zimmerman (Fall 2003). "Sesac Focus Fall 2003" (PDF). Magazine. Sesac. Retrieved on 2008-08-23.

^ Clapton - The early years

^ Clapton's Bluesbreakers Guitar Was A 1960 Gibson Les Paul Standard

^ Andy Summers

^ a b c Les Paul Guitars « Guitar Player Gear Guide

^ a b c Strat Collector News Desk: Eric Clapton Guitar Auction, June 24, 2004: More Information and Images

^ Strat Collector News Desk: 2004 Eric Clapton Crossroads Guitar Auction: the Auction, the Burst Brothers, and Lee Dickson

^ Fender Players Club - The Strat Chronicles

^ Strat Collector News Desk: An Interview with Eric Clapton Guitar Technician Lee Dickson

^ The Eric Clapton FAQ - Guitars

^ Rock Memorabilia Market Booms: Eric Clapton : Rolling Stone

^ Eric Clapton's Blackie - Guitar Center

^ Hard Rock Cafe NEW YORK - HISTORY

^ a b Eric Clapton - ClaptonWeb.com - E.C. Mainline Florida

^ "Ernie Ball - Artists". Ernie Ball. . Retrieved on 2008-08-21.

^ Christie's - Eric Clapton Guitars

^ "Rhapsody.com Eric Clapton advert". 2007. . Retrieved on 2007-03-23.
^ The Ten Right-Wing Rockers | The Observer


^ Quoted in "Crossroads? Music for the M25 more like" by Simon Price, The Independent on Sunday, 9 May 2004 (retrieved 25 January 2009)

^ dead link

^ Review: Eric Clapton by Eric Clapton | Review | The Observer

^ "Eric Clapton". The South Bank Show (ITV). 2007-12-02.

^ Michael Schumacher, Crossroads: The Life and Music of Eric Clapton. Consulted on August 12, 2007.

^ "1993 Grammy Winners". Newspaper Article. New York Times. February 26, 1993. Retrieved on 2008-08-20.

^ "Eric Clapton: Blues guitar legend", December 31, 2003

^ "Clapton's Hall of Fame hat-trick"

^ "CBEs - full list", December 31, 2003

^ BBC News "Musician Clapton delighted by CBE", November 3, 2004

[دل تنگم]

[ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]


Also known as Satch, Saint Joe


Born July 15, 1956 (1956-07-15) (age 52) Westbury, New York, U.S.


Genre(s) Instrumental rock, jazz fusion, hard rock, blues, heavy metal, neo-classical metal


Occupation(s) Guitarist, Songwriter


Instrument(s) Guitar, Bass, Keyboards, Vocals, Harmonica, Banjo


Years active 1978 - present


Label(s) Sony, Epic Records, Relativity Records


Associated acts Mick Jagger, Deep Purple, Steve Vai, G3, Sammy Hagar, Chickenfoot, Jason Becker


Website Official website

برای مشاهده محتوا ، لطفا وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید

(Notable instrument (s


Ibanez Joe Satriani Signature model


[ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]
Ibanez JS Series - Colors available:
JS100: Black, White, Transparent Red
JS1000: Black Pearl, Burnt Transparent Blue
JS1200: Candy Apple Red
JS1600: Silver



Joseph "Satch" Satriani (born July 15, 1956 in Westbury, New York, United States) is an American multiple nominated Grammy Award multi-instrumentalist, best known as an instrumental rock guitarist. Early in his career, Satriani worked as a guitar instructor, and some of his former students have achieved fame with their stellar guitar skills. Satriani has been a driving force behind other musicians throughout his career, as a founder of the ever-changing touring trio, G3, as well as performing in temporary positions with other musicians.


In 1988, Satriani was recruited by the The Rolling Stones' Mick Jagger as lead guitarist for the singer's second solo tour.[1] Later, in 1994, Satriani was also the lead guitarist for Deep Purple.[2] Satriani has also worked with a wide range of guitarists from many musical genres, including Steve Vai, John Petrucci, Eric Johnson, Larry LaLonde, Yngwie Malmsteen, Brian May, Patrick Rondat, Andy Timmons, Paul Gilbert, Adrian Legg, and Robert Fripp through the annual G3 Jam Concerts.[3]


He is heavily influenced by famous music icons such as Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck.[2] Since 1988, Satriani has used his own signature guitar, the Ibanez JS Series, which is widely sold in stores.[4] He also has a signature series amplifier, the Peavey JSX, and a signature Vox distortion pedal, the Satchurator.


Biography


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Satriani was inspired to play guitar at age 14 soon after learning of the death of Jimi Hendrix.[5] He has been said to have heard the news during a football training session, where he confronted his coach and announced that he was quitting to become a guitarist.[citation needed]


1970's


In 1974, Satriani studied music with jazz guitarist Billy Bauer and with reclusive jazz pianist Lennie Tristano. The technically demanding Tristano greatly influenced Satriani's playing. Satriani also began teaching guitar, with his most notable student at the time being fellow Long Island native Steve Vai. While he was Vai's teacher, he was attending Five Towns College for studies in music.
In 1978 Satriani moved to Berkeley, California to pursue a music career, and Vai moved on to study at the Berklee School of Music, soon after graduating becoming a high profile guitarist first with Frank Zappa, and after, other famous bands.


Not long after Satriani arrived in California, he resumed teaching. His students included Kirk Hammett of Metallica, Marty Friedman (ex-Megadeth), David Bryson of Counting Crows, Kevin Cadogan from Third Eye Blind, Larry LaLonde of Primus / Possessed, Alex Skolnick of Testament, Rick Hunolt (ex-Exodus), Phil Kettner of Lääz Rockit, Geoff Tyson of T-Ride, and Charlie Hunter.


1980's


When his friend and former student Steve Vai gained fame playing with David Lee Roth in 1986, Vai raved about Satriani in several interviews with guitar magazines.[citation needed] In 1987, Satriani's second album Surfing with the Alien produced popular radio hits and was the first all-instrumental release to chart so highly in many years. In 1988 Satriani helped produce the EP The Eyes of Horror for the death metal band Possessed.


In 1989, Satriani released the album Flying in a Blue Dream. The album sold well.[citation needed] "One Big Rush" was featured on the soundtrack to the Cameron Crowe movie Say Anything. "The Forgotten Part II" was featured on a Labatt Blue commercial in Canada in 1993. "Big Bad Moon", one of Satriani's few songs to feature his vocals, was a minor hit in late 1989.


1990's


In 1992, Satriani released The Extremist, his most critically acclaimed and commercially successful album to date. Radio stations across the country were quick to pick up on "Summer Song", while "Cryin'", "Friends" and the title track were regional hits.


In late 1993, Satriani joined Deep Purple as a temporary replacement for departed guitarist Ritchie Blackmore during the band's Japanese tour. The concerts were such a success that Satriani was asked to join the band permanently but he declined, having just signed a multi-album solo deal with Sony, so Steve Morse took the guitarist slot in Deep Purple.[6]


G3


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Satriani with G3 in Milan, 2004


In 1996, he founded the G3, a concert tour intended to feature a power trio consisting of three instrumental rock guitarists. The original lineup featured Satriani, Vai, and Eric Johnson. The G3 (tour) has continued periodically since its inaugural version, where Satriani is the only permanent member, featuring differing second and third members. Other guitarists who have performed in such a G3 configuration include among others: Steve Vai, Eric Johnson, Yngwie Malmsteen, John Petrucci, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Robert Fripp, Andy Timmons, Uli Jon Roth, Michael Schenker, Adrian Legg and Paul Gilbert.


In 1998 Satriani recorded and released Crystal Planet, which went back to a sound more reminiscent of his late '80s work. Planet was followed up with Engines of Creation, one of his more experimental works featuring the 'Electronica' genre of music. During the subsequent tour, a pair of shows at the Fillmore in San Francisco were recorded in December 2000 and released as Live in San Francisco, a two-disc live album and DVD.



[ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]
Satriani, Steve Vai, and John Petrucci, as G3 Melbourne, 2006 Photo Mandy Hall.


Y 2000 and beyond


Over the next several years, Satriani regularly recorded and released evolving music, including Strange Beautiful Music in 2002 and Is There Love in Space? in 2004.


In 2006 Satriani recorded and released Super Colossal and Satriani Live!, another two-disc live album and DVD recorded May 3, 2006 at the Grove in Anaheim, CA.


On August 7, 2007 Epic/Legacy Recordings re-released Surfing with the Alien to celebrate the 20th anniversary of its release. This was a two-disc set that includes a remastered album and a DVD of a previously never-before-seen live show filmed at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1988.[7]


Satriani's newest album, titled Professor Satchafunkilus and the Musterion of Rock, was released on April 1, 2008.[8]


Controversy


On December 4, 2008 Satriani filed a copyright infringement suit in Los Angeles federal court against Coldplay, claiming the Coldplay song "Viva la Vida" includes "substantial original portions" of the Satriani song "If I Could Fly" from his 2004 album, Is There Love in Space?. The Coldplay song in question has received two Grammy Awards for "Song of the Year".[9] Coldplay has denied the allegation,[10] which has resulted in further legal action from Satriani.[11][12].


Other work



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Joe Satriani with Stu Hamm in concert, Rijnhal, Arnhem (June 12, 2008)


Satriani is also credited on many other albums, including guitar duties on Alice Cooper's 1991 album Hey Stoopid, Spinal Tap's 1992 album Break Like the Wind, Blue Öyster Cult's 1988 album Imaginos, band members Stu Hamm and Gregg Bissonette's solo albums. Interestingly, he was credited with singing background vocals on the 1986 debut album by Crowded House. In 2003, he played lead guitar on The Yardbirds's CD release Birdland. In 2006 he made appearances on several tracks for Deep Purple vocalist Ian Gillan's solo CD/DVD dual disc Gillan's Inn. On Dream Theater's 2007 album, Systematic Chaos, Satriani contributed spoken lyrics to the song "Repentance". Satriani also contributed a guitar solo to Jordan Rudess' 2004 solo release Rhythm of Time.


He is also featured in the Christopher Guest film, For Your Consideration, as the guitarist in the band that played for the late-night show.[citation needed]


Chickenfoot


Main article: Chickenfoot (band)


It was revealed on May 29, 2008 that Satriani is involved in a new hard rock project called Chickenfoot with former Van Halen members Sammy Hagar, Michael Anthony and Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer, Chad Smith. The band, which will feature Hagar on vocals, Satriani on guitar, Anthony on bass and Smith on drums.[13] are currently writing material and recording their debut album which is due for release in June 2009.[14] On his website Joe announced that he will release a live DVD featuring his 2008 tour. It will be called "Live in Paris".[15]


Technique and influence


Satriani is widely recognized as a technically advanced rock guitarist, and has been described as a virtuoso.[16][17] He has mastered many performance techniques on the instrument, including legato, two-handed tapping and arpeggio tapping, volume swells, harmonics, and extreme whammy bar effects. One of his trademark compositional traits is the use of pitch axis theory, which he applies with a variety of modes.[citation needed] During fast passages, Joe favors a legato technique (achieved primarily through hammer-ons and pull-offs) which yields smooth and flowing runs. He is also adept at other speed-related techniques such as speed picking (a rapid form of alternate picking) and sweep picking, but does not often use them.


Satriani has received 14 Grammy nominations[18] and has sold more than 10 million albums worldwide.[19] Many of his fans and friends call him "Satch," short for "Satriani". Other guitarists sometimes refer to him as "Saint Joe"; there are numerous t-shirts to this effect.[citation needed]


An influential guitarist himself,[20] Satriani has many influences, including jazz guitarists Django Reinhardt, Wes Montgomery, Allan Holdsworth and Charlie Christian,[21] and rock guitarists Jimi Hendrix[22] and Ritchie Blackmore.[23]


Equipment


Satriani has endorsed Ibanez's JS Series guitars, and Peavey's JSX amplifier. Both lines were designed specifically as signature products for Satriani. The Ibanez JS100 was based on and replaced the Ibanez 540 Radius model which Satriani first endorsed. However, Satriani uses a variety of gear. Many of his guitars are made by Ibanez, including the JS1000, and JS1200. These guitars typically feature the DiMarzio PAF Pro (which he used up until 1993 in both the neck and bridge positions), the DiMarzio Fred (which he used in the bridge position from 1993 to 2005), and the Mo' Joe and the Paf Joe (which he uses in the bridge and neck positions, respectively, from 2005 to present day). The JS line of guitars is his signature line, and they feature the Edge Pro, which is Ibanez's exclusive vibrato system, although he's always used the Original Edge unit on his guitars. The guitar with which he was most often associated during the nineties was a chrome-finished guitar nicknamed "Chrome Boy" (this instrument can be seen on the Live in San Francisco DVD). However, the guitar used for most of the concert was in fact a lookalike nicknamed "Pearly", which featured Seymour Duncan Pearly Gates pickups.


Satriani also uses a number of other JS models such as the JS double neck model, JS700 (primary axe on the self-titled CD and seen on the 1995 tour "Joe Satriani", which features a fixed bridge, P-90 pickups, and a matching mahogany body and neck), JS600 (natural body) , JS1 (the original JS model), JS2000 (fixed bridge model), a variety of JS100s, JS1000s and JS1200s with custom paint work, and a large amount of prototype JSs. All double locking bridges have been the original Edge tremolo, not the newer models, which point to a more custom guitar than the "off the shelf" models. Joe has also played a red 7-string JS model, as seen in the "G3 Live in Tokyo" DVD from 2005.



[ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]
Satriani and the band


Satriani has used a wide variety of guitar amps over the years, using Marshall Amplification for his main amplifier (notably the limited edition blue coloured 6100 LM model) up until 2001, and his Peavey signature series amps, the Peavey JSX, thereafter. The JSX began life as a prototype Peavey XXX and developed into the Joe Satriani signature Peavey model, now available for purchase in retail stores. Joe Satriani has used other amplifiers over the years in the studio, however. Those include the Peavey 5150 (used to record the song 'Crystal Planet'), Cornford, and the Mesa/Boogie Mark IIC+ (used to record the song 'Flying in a Blue Dream'), amongst others.


His effects pedals include the Vox wah, Dunlop Cry Baby wah, RMC Wizard Wah, Digitech Whammy, BOSS DS-1, BOSS CH-1, BOSS CE-2, BOSS DD-2 and a standard BOSS DD-3 (used together to emulate reverb effects), BOSS BF-3, BOSS OC-2, Barber Burn Drive Unit, Fulltone Deja Vibe, Fulltone Ultimate Octave, and Electro-Harmonix POG (Polyphonic Octave Generator), the latter being featured prominently on the title cut to his 2006 Super Colossal.


Satriani has also partnered recently with Planet Waves to create a signature line of guitar picks and guitar straps featuring his sketch art.


Although Satriani endorses the JSX, he has also used many different amps in the studio when recording, including the Peavey Classic. He is also known to have used Marshall heads and cabinets, including live, prior to his Peavey endorsement. Most recently Satriani used the JSX head through a Palmer Speaker Simulator. Joe Satriani has also released a Class-A 5-watt tube amp called the "Mini Colossal".


He is currently working with Vox on his own line of signature effects pedals designed to deliver Satriani's trademark tone plus a wide range of new sounds for guitarists of all playing styles and ability levels. The first being a signature distortion pedal titled the "Satchurator", and recently, the "Time Machine" which will be a delay pedal, with more to follow in 2008, including a wah pedal called the "Big Bad Wah".[24]


Recurring themes



[ برای مشاهده لینک ، لطفا با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]
Satriani during a concert at the Rijnhal, Arnhem (June 12, 2008)


Satriani's work frequently makes references to various science fiction stories and/or ideas. "Surfing with the Alien", "Back to Shalla-Bal" and "The Power Cosmic 2000" refer to the comic book character Silver Surfer, while "Ice 9" refers to the secret government ice weapon in Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle. "Borg ---" is a reference to Star Trek, which features a homogeneous cybernetic race known as the Borg. Additionally, his albums and songs often have other-worldly titles, such as Not of this Earth, Crystal Planet, Is There Love in Space?, and Engines of Creation.


On the album Super Colossal the song titled "Crowd Chant" was originally called "Party on the Enterprise". "Party on the Enterprise" featured sampled sounds from the Starship Enterprise from the Star Trek TV show. But as Satriani explained in a podcast, legal issues regarding the samples could not be resolved and he was unable to get permission to use them.[25] Satriani then removed the sounds from the song and called it "Crowd Chant." This song is played when goals are scored by the Phoenix Coyotes at Jobing.com Arena in Glendale, Arizona since the 2006-2007 season; and also related to the Vancouver Canucks at G.M. Place as well as the Minnesota Wild's goal horn at Xcel Energy Center.


"Redshift Riders", another song on the Super Colossal album, is "...based on the idea that in the future, when people can travel throughout space, they will theoretically take advantage of the cosmological redshift effect so they can be swung around large planetary objects and get across [the] universe a lot faster than normal," Satriani said in a podcast about the song.[26]


On the album Professor Satchafunkilus and the Musterion of Rock the song "I Just Wanna Rock", is about a giant robot on the run who happens upon a rock concert.[27]


Satriani has also composed many songs that are featured in the series of NASCAR based video games including NASCAR 06: Total Team Control.


Satriani's "Summer Song" is included in the soundtrack for the video game Gran Turismo 4. "Summer Song" is also included on the Formula 1 game for the Sony PlayStation, along with "Back to Shalla-Bal." "Summer Song" had also been briefly used during a 30 second advertising spots for both Pepsi, and the Sony Walkman. The theme for the television series Heartbreak High also features riffs from "Summer Song".


Satriani's song "Satch Boogie" is a playable track on the popular video game Guitar Hero: World Tour.


Philanthropy


In 2006, Satriani signed on as an official supporter of Little Kids Rock, a non-profit organization that provides free musical instruments and free lessons to children in public schools throughout the U.S.A. Satriani has personally delivered instruments to children in the program through a charity raffle for the organization and, in common with Steve Vai, sits on its board of directors as an honorary member.


Awards and nominations


Nominations


Satriani now has the most Grammy Award nominations of any artist (15) without winning.[28][29]


Nominations


Album, Category Year


1989 Always With Me, Always With You Best Pop Instrumental Performance
1989 Surfing with the Alien, Best Rock Instrumental Performance
1990 The Crush of Love, Best Rock Instrumental Performance
1991 Flying in a Blue Dream, Best Rock Instrumental Performance
1993 The Extremist, Best Rock Instrumental Performance
1994 Speed of Light, Best Rock Instrumental Performance
1995 All Alone, Best Rock Instrumental Performance
1997 (You're) My World, Best Rock Instrumental Performance
1998 Summer Song (Live), Best Rock Instrumental Performance
1999 A Train of Angels, Best Rock Instrumental Performance
2001 Until We Say Goodbye, Best Rock Instrumental Performance
2002 Always With Me, Always With You (Live), Best Rock Instrumental Performance from Live in San Francisco
2003 Starry Night, Best Rock Instrumental Performance
2006 Super Colossal, Best Rock Instrumental Performance
2008 Always With Me, Always With You (Live), Best Rock Instrumental Performance from Satriani Live!


Discography


Solo albums


1986 - Not of This Earth
1987 - Surfing with the Alien - Platinum (USA)[30]
1989 - Flying in a Blue Dream - Gold (USA)[31]
1992 - The Extremist - Gold (USA)[32]
1993 - Time Machine - Gold (USA)[33]
1995 - Joe Satriani
1998 - Crystal Planet
2000 - Engines of Creation
2002 - Strange Beautiful Music
2004 - Is There Love in Space?
2006 - Super Colossal
2008 - Professor Satchafunkilus and the Musterion of Rock


EPs


1984 - The Joe Satriani EP
1988 - Dreaming #11 - Gold (USA)[34]
2000 - Additional Creations


Compilations


1993 - The Beautiful Guitar
2003 - The Electric Joe Satriani: An Anthology
2005 - One Big Rush
2008 - Joe Satriani Original Album Classics


Live albums


1993 - Time Machine
2001 - Live in San Francisco
2006 - Satriani Live!


With other artists


Artist, Album Year


1986 Crowded House, Crowded House
1986 Greg Kihn, Love And Rock And Roll
1987 Danny Gottleib, Aquamarine
1988 Stuart Hamm, Radio Free Albemuth
1991 Alice Cooper, Hey Stupid
1992 Spinal Tap, Break Like the Wind
1997 Steve Vai / Eric Johnson, G3: Live in Concert
1997 Steve Vai / Alex Lifeson / Joe Perry, Merry xmas Volume 1
2003 Steve Vai / Yngwie Malmsteen, G3: Rockin' in the Free World
2003 The Yardbirds, Birdland
2005 Steve Vai / John Petrucci, G3: Live in Tokyo
2006 Ian Gillan, Gillan's Inn
2007 John 5, The Devil Knows My Name
2007 Dream Theater (spoken voice only), Systematic Chaos
2008 Funtwo, Youtube live
2009 Chickenfoot (with Sammy Hagar, Michael Anthony and Chad Smith) Chickenfoot (to be released 5th June (US), 8th June (Europe))


References


1.^ Joe Satriani's G3 rounds up another trio of guitar slingers
2.^ a b Shrivastava, Rahul. "Joe Satriani Interview". BBC. Retrieved on 2007-01-13.
3.^ John R., Luini. "Joe Satriani Biography". ForeverJoe. Retrieved on 2007-01-13.
4.^ Harris, Rich. "Ibanez JS Joe Satriani Guitar Specs". Retrieved on 2007-01-13.
5.^ Hard N Heavy Video Magazine interview - 1989
6.^ Satriani's Offer of a Future with Deep Purple Accessed February 21, 2009
7.^ joe satriani - discography > surfing with the alien
8.^ NEW MUSIC BLOG: Joe Satriani | musicradar.com
9.^ Coldplay Sued By Joe Satriani For Allegedly Plagiarizing 'Viva La Vida' Melody », peoplestar.co.uk, Retrieved on 2008-12-06.
10.^ Van Halen, Red Hot Chili Peppers Launch New Project | News @ Ultimate-Guitar.Com
11.^ Joe Satriani home news
12.^ Rock Guitar World: Joe Satriani
13.^ CANdYRAT Records
14.^ joe satriani - home > news
15.^ Joe Satriani Interview
16.^ Harmony Central April 21, 2008Real "Guitar Hero™" Joe Satriani turns Teacher at WorkshopLive.com
17.^ joe satriani - gear > 2008-01-18 vox announcement
18.^ Rock On The Net: Grammy Awards: Best Rock Instrumental Performance
19.^ Rock On The Net: Grammy Awards: Best Pop Instrumental Performance

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