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.

[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."

[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

[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

[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

[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.