Nick Cave is best known as a contemporary singer although he has made the occasional film such as “Johnny Suede” in 1991. He was born in 1957 in the state of Victoria, Australia.
Contemporary Actors
Collection of Contemporary Actors
Christine Lahti
Christine Lahti was born in 1950 in Michigan. Early in her career, she won two major roles, “And Justice For All” opposite Al Pacino in 1979 and “Whose Life Is It Anyway” opposite Richard Dreyfuss in 1981. She was nominated for an Oscar for “Swing Shift” with Goldie Hawn and gave a terrific performance in “Running On Empty”.
TCM overview:
Beginning in the late 1970s, acclaimed film, television and stage actress Christine Lahti carved out a niche for herself in an emerging field for Hollywood actresses – roles as professional, independent career women. Uninterested in wasting her dedication to acting on thinly-written supporting roles as girlfriends and wives, Lahti was in the right place at the right time and gave strong showings in character-driven films like “Whose Life is it Anyway?” (1981), “Swing Shift” (1984) and “Running on Empty” (1988), for which she earned an Academy Award nomination. In between film roles as smart, compassionate doctors, lawyers, and educators, Lahti was a constant television presence with her Golden Globe-winning run on the medical drama “Chicago Hope” (CBS, 1994-2000) and award-winning telepics like the homeless family chronicle “No Place Like Home” (CBS, 1989). Throughout her career, Lahti regularly revisited her roots as a theater actress, notably in several plays by Wendy Wasserstein, and also branched out to direct episodic TV and films, making her one of the most respected women in Hollywood and one with a palpable commitment to quality storytelling.
Born April 4, 1949, Lahti was raised in Birmingham, MI where she was the daughter of a surgeon father and a nurse-turned-painter mother. At the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Lahti was active in theater and performed with a mime troupe that toured internationally, including an appearance in a mime version of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” on the London stage. After graduating with a degree in speech and drama, Lahti intended to earn a Masters from Florida State University, but after only a year, she moved to New York where she studied drama at the renowned HB Studio and The Neighborhood Studio. Waitress work and street mime performing finally gave way to a steady career in television commercials and a breakthrough stage role in David Mamet’s “The Woods” in 1978, for which she earned a Theater World Award. The same year, she made her TV debut as a co-star of the ABC movie-pilot “Dr. Scorpion,” which led to a stint as a series regular on the short-lived “The Harvey Korman Show” (ABC, 1978), where she played the comedian’s daughter.
Lahti’s impressive work alongside drama legend Lee Strasberg in the TV movie “The Last Tenant” (ABC, 1978) caught the eye of producer-director, Norman Jewison. He subsequently cast her as a lawyer and ethics committee member who becomes involved with an ethically questionable lawyer (Al Pacino) in the acclaimed “… And Justice for All” (1979). After a return to the off-Broadway stage to play opposite Kevin Kline in “Loose Ends,” Lahti further established her strength for playing professional, independent women with her role as the doctor of an accident victim (Richard Dreyfus) fighting for his right to die in John Badham’s film adaptation of the Broadway hit “Whose Life Is It Anyway?” (1981). Lahti finally made it to Broadway herself in “Division Street,” Steve Tesich’s comedy about grown-up 1960s hippies in the 1980s and had a small supporting role in the punk rock cult film “Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains” (1981).
After taking a key role in the TV miniseries based on Norman Mailer’s biography of career criminal Gary Gilmore, “The Executioner’s Song” (NBC, 1982), Lahti experienced a major film breakthrough in “Swing Shift” (1984), co-starring opposite Goldie Hawn as her aspiring singer best friend and co-worker at a WWII munitions plant. Injecting the character with a much-needed dose of acerbic wit, Lahti earned great reviews and was recognized with a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination. She portrayed another single career woman; this one befriended by a married woman (Mary Tyler Moore) who learns they share a man in common, in the soapy tearjerker “Just Between Friends” (1986). Her role as a repressed woman who blossoms when she falls in love with an East German operative in the controversial ABC miniseries “Amerika” (1987) earned her an Emmy nomination, and she followed up the pair of dramas by playing a free-spirited aunt who inspires her nieces in the lighthearted comedy, “Housekeeping” (1987).
In one of Lahti’s most memorable big screen performances, she earned a Golden Globe nomination for Sidney Lumet’s intense “Running on Empty” (1988). The film starred Lahti and Judd Hirsch as former 1960s political activists on the run from the FBI with a family in tow, including a teen son played by River Ph nix. Lahti returned to Broadway in Wendy Wasserstein’s “The Heidi Chronicles” and concurrently appeared on movie screens in 1989’s “Gross Anatomy,” where she was seen as the stern medical professor of class rebel, Matthew Modine. She gave a Golden Globe Award-winning performance as the matriarch of a family forced to live on the streets in “No Place Like Home” (CBS, 1989), and a CableACE Award as a conservative educator who finds unlikely romance with a Hispanic janitor in “Crazy from the Heart” (TNT, 1991), directed by her husband Thomas Schlamme. After an unchallenging role as William Hurt’s unhappy wife in “The Doctor” (1991), Lahti was back on stage in the off-Broadway play “Three Hotels.”
Following a hiatus, during which the actress gave birth to twins, Lahti returned to work with a string of TV movies and moved behind the camera to nail her directorial debut with “Lieberman in Love” (1995), co-starring as a prostitute opposite Danny Aiello. The film earned an Oscar for Best Live Action Short Film. In 1995, Lahti joined the second season of the CBS medical drama “Chicago Hope” (1994-2000), playing the complicated, ambitious cardiothoracic surgeon and feminist, Dr. Kathryn Austin. The show also gave Lahti the opportunity to direct, and she helmed a number of episodes throughout her on-screen run, while earning four consecutive Emmy nominations as Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series and a victory in 1998. She famously won a Golden Globe for her role in 1998, and was forced to rush out of the ladies’ room and scurry red-faced onto the stage to collect her trophy. During her off-seasons from “Chicago Hope,” Lahti continued to take on new projects, starring in the Goldie Hawn-helmed TV movie about small town secrets, “Hope” (TNT, 1997) and writer-director Stephen Tolkin’s biopic about a religious woman who kills a camp counselor who has molested her son in “Judgment Day: The Ellie Nesler Story” (USA, 1999).
Lahti left “Hope” in 1999 and reunited with Wendy Wasserstein, taking the lead in the playwright’s tale of a prominent senator’s daughter and Surgeon General nominee who comes under a media attack for minor transgressions in “An American Daughter” (Lifetime, 2000). The following year, she stepped behind the camera to direct her first feature film “My First Mister” (2001), a well-reviewed tale of a 17-year-old misfit (Leelee Sobieski) and her relationship with a neurotic middle aged man (Albert Brooks). After strong turns headlining telepics including “The Pilot’s Wife,” (CBS, 2002) and “Out of the Ashes” (Showtime, 2003), where she played a doctor and Jewish holocaust survivor, Lahti returned to series television in The WB drama, “Jack & Bobby” (2004- ). For the show’s short two-season run, Lahti starred as the fiery, strong-willed, pot-smoking college professor mother of two teen sons, one of whom eventually becomes the U.S. President. Despite strong reviews, particularly centering on Lahti’s multidimensional portrayal, the show failed to find a fan base and was cancelled in 2005.
She rebounded with a recurring role on NBC’s Hollywood dramedy “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” (NBC, 2006-07), as a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist writing a Vanity Fair piece on the show-within-the-show. Lahti went on to make strong showings in a pair of little-seen indies, beginning with the academia-set comedy “Smart People” (2008), and “Yonkers J ” (2009), a character drama about a professional gambler’s (Chazz Palminteri) estranged relationship with his mentally disabled son. Later in the year, Lahti enjoyed a supporting role in the high profile thriller “Obsessed” starring Beyonce Knowles.
The above TCM overview can also be viewed online here.
Howard Stern
Howard Stern was born in 1954 in Jackson Heights, New York City. He is most famous as a radio host. He has though starred also in the film “Private Parts” in 1996.
IMDB entry:
Howard Allan Stern was born on Jan. 12, 1954, in Jackson Heights, New York. His first radio experience was at Boston University, where he volunteered at the college radio station. Along with several other students, he created an on-air show called the King Schmaltz Bagel Hour, a takeoff on the popular King Biscuit Flour Hour. Predicting his penchant for controversy, the show was canceled after its first broadcast, which included the comedy sketch “Name That Sin,” a game show where contestants confessed their worst sins. Stern graduated in 1976 with a 3.8 grade-point average and a bachelor’s degree in communications. During his first paying radio gig, at an understaffed 3,000-watt station in Briarcliff Manor, New York, “It dawned on me that I would never make it as a straight deejay,” Stern told James S. Kunen in an interview for People (10/22/84), “so I started to mess around. It was unheard-of to mix talking on the phone with playing music. It was outrageous, It was blasphemy.”
Toby Stephens
Toby Stephens was born in 1969 in London. He is the son of actors Robert Stephens and Maggie Smith. He made his acting debut in 1992 in the miniseries “The Camomile Lawn”. He played the villian in the James Bond in “Die Another Day” in 2002. He also starred as ‘Rochester’ in “Jane Eyre” with Ruth Wilson.
TCM overview:
It was perhaps only natural that this second son of Sir Robert Stephens and Dame Maggie Smith should follow in his parents’ stead and pursue a career as an actor. Handsome, dark-haired Toby Stephens began to land key roles in stage and screen productions almost immediately after his 1991 graduation from LAMDA. He first made an impression with British TV audiences co-starring with Jennifer Ehle in “The Chamomile Lawn” in 1992, the same year he debuted on the big screen in “Orlando”.
Stephens went on to a distinguished stage career, joining the Royal Shakespeare Company and becoming the youngest actor with the troupe to undertake the lead in the Bard’s “Coriolanus” (1994). Daring to step into the shadow of Marlon Brando, he tackled the role of Stanley Kowalski opposite Jessica Lange in the 1996 Peter Hall-staged London production of “A Streetcar Named Desire”. His rising status as a leading man was cemented with his turn as Orsino in “Twelfth Night” (1996), Trevor Nunn’s feature adaptation of Shakespeare’s comedy, and as Gilbert Markham, the Yorkshire farmer who falls for a married woman, in the small screen version of Anne Bronte’s novel “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall” (also 1996). Although his next couple of films didn’t fare too well at the box office, Stephens earned mostly good notices for his work, whether playing an early 20th-century photographer in “Photographing Fairies” (1997) or 19th-century men in “Cousin Bette” (1998) or “Onegin” (1999). After making his Broadway debut playing twins in the farcical “Ring Around the Moon” in 1999, the actor was tapped to portray the young incarnation of director-star Clint Eastwood’s astronaut in “Space Cowboys” (2000). That same year, he tried to embody F. Scott Fitzgerald’s elusive titular character in the A&E version of “The Great Gatsby”, but while he cut the proper dashing figure, something was missing in his interpretation of the role. He fared better in his homeland playing a supporting role in the critically-acclaimed BBC2 presentation “Perfect Strangers” (2001) and a return to the stage alongside Dame Judi Dench in “The Royal Family”. Director Neil LaBute tapped Stephens to play a self-serving academic in “Possession” (2002) before the actor landed a part that reach his wide audience yet– the villainous Gustav Graves in “Die Another Day” (2002), the 20th James Bond film. Stephens held his own against Pierce Brosnan as 007, proving one of the more charismatic of the recent Bond bad guys and demonstrating a flair for physical combat in the action-packed fencing sequence with Brosnan.
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
Lex Shrapnel
Lex Sharpnel was born in 1979 in London. His father is the actor John Sharpnel and his maternal granmother is the iconic actress Deborah Kerr. He is best known for his performance in “K-11” and “The Widowmaker”.
For Lex Sharpnel website, please click here.
Bob Hoskins
“He’s a character man. Nature made him thus. When you see a photograph you can (if you know him) hear his loud north London voice, not a pretty thing. But he does not always use his voice in that way: he can change, as varied an actors as films have ever seen. His work has a quality of rawness, of hurt, of awareness that suddenly this – fame, success – will disappear. Working-class actors like Hoskins seldom get to the top branches of show business. They may, in the clarified terms of British cinema, be clowns or comics but never a leading man. Michael Caine is another exception, and in his case a look of surprise permeated his early performances. Hoskins is a more rounded performer, if usually cast in strong roles. In the U.S. he has been compared to Edward G. Robinson and George C. Scott: comparisons in Britain would be James Mason or Oliver Reed, both of whose careers were very different.” – David Shipman in “The Great Movie Stars – The Independent Years”. (1991).
Bob Hoskins was born in Bury St Edmonds, West Suffolk in 1942. A popular character actor, he became a star in 1980 with his performance as the East End gangster in “The Long Good Friday”. His other movie credits include “Who Framed Roger Rabbit”, “Neverland” and “Mona Lisa”. He announced his retirement from acting in 2012. He died in 2014.
Ryan Gibney’s “Guardian” obituary:
Plenty of better-looking performers than Bob Hoskins, who has died aged 71 of pneumonia, have found themselves consigned to a life of bit parts. Short, bullet-headed, lacking any noticeable neck, but with a mutable face that could switch from snarling to sparkling in the time it took him to drop an aitch, Hoskins was far from conventional leading-man material. In his moments of on-screen rage, he resembled a pink grenade. But he was defined from the outset by a mix of the tough and the tender that served him well throughout his career.
As the beleaguered, optimistic sheet-music salesman in the BBC series Pennies from Heaven (1978), written by Dennis Potter, he was sweetly galumphing and sincere. Playing an ambitious East End gangster in The Long Good Friday (1980), he added an intimidating quality to the vulnerability already established. Hoskins could be poodle or pitbull; as a reluctant driver for a prostitute in Mona Lisa (1986) and a patiently calculating murderer in Felicia’s Journey (1999), he was a cross-breed of the two. No other actor has a more legitimate claim on the title of the British Cagney.
When international success came in the mid-1980s, Hoskins made not the least modification to his persona or perspective, maintaining the down-to-earth view: “Actors are just entertainers, even the serious ones. That’s all an actor is. He’s like a serious Bruce Forsyth.”
Born in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, and raised in north London, he was the only child of Robert, a bookkeeper, and Elsie, a teacher and school cook. Bob left school at the age of 15 and took various jobs – bouncer, porter, window cleaner, fire-eater – after dropping out of an accountancy course. Accompanying a friend to an audition at the Unity theatre, London, in 1968, Hoskins landed a part. He acted in television and theatre in the early 1970s; Pennies from Heaven, filmed shortly after the acrimonious collapse of his marriage to Jane Livesey, secured his reputation and showed him to be an actor as deft as he was vanity-free (he likened himself in that musical drama to a “little hippopotamus”).
In The Long Good Friday, he showed the charismatic swagger necessary to fill a cinema screen, though it was the picture’s final shot – a protracted close-up of Hoskins’s defiant face – that sticks most indelibly in the memory. In 1981, he played Iago opposite Anthony Hopkins in Jonathan Miller’s BBC adaptation of Othello and also met Linda Banwell. The following year she became his second wife, and the person he would credit with helping him survive periods of depression. He wrote a play, The Bystander, inspired by the nervous breakdown he suffered after his first marriage ended.
For more than a decade, he did little television; there were only a handful of exceptions, including some ubiquitous television commercials for British Telecom in which he delivered the catchphrase “It’s good to talk”. He concentrated predominantly on his film career. Highlights included his playful odd-couple double act with Fred Gwynne in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Cotton Club (1984), and his portrayal of a down-at-heel businessman wooing an alcoholic piano teacher (Maggie Smith) in The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (1987). He was amusing in a cameo as a heating engineer in Terry Gilliam’s Brazil (1985) and as a coarse screenwriter in the comedy Sweet Liberty (1986), one of four films he made with his friend Michael Caine.
oskins in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Photograph: Moviestore Collection/REX
Hoskins’s pivotal roles in that period could not have been more different. Playing the belligerent but kind-hearted ex-con in Mona Lisa, Neil Jordan’s London film noir, won him many awards (including a Golden Globe and the best actor prize at Cannes), as well as his only Oscar nomination. A year later, he took on his greatest technical challenge in Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), Robert Zemeckis’s fusion of live action and animation, in which Hoskins was one of the film’s few flesh-and-blood participants.
In the wake of the film’s success, he worked widely in Hollywood: with Denzel Washington in the comic thriller Heart Condition, and Cher in Mermaids (both 1990) and playing Smee (a role he reprised on TV in the 2011 Neverland) in Spielberg’s Hook (1991). The chief catalyst of his disillusionment with Hollywood was his work on the disastrous 1993 videogame spin-off Super Mario Bros. His parts in US films were intermittent thereafter, and included playing J Edgar Hoover in Oliver Stone’s Nixon (1995). “You don’t go to Hollywood for art,” he said in 1999, “and once you’ve got your fame and fortune – especially the fortune in the bank – you can do what you want to do. It’s basically fuck-you money.”
Hoskins directed two undistinguished features – a fable, The Raggedy Rawney (1988), and the family film Rainbow (1995) – but claimed: “I just got fandangled into it.” If it is true that, in common with Caine, he made too many films purely for the money, it is also the case that he never lost touch entirely with his own talents. Although he dredged up his brutal side on occasion, such as in the action thriller Unleashed (2005), tenderness predominated in later years. He played a wistful boxing coach in Shane Meadows’s Twenty Four Seven (1997), and appeared alongside his Long Good Friday co-star, Helen Mirren, in the bittersweet 2001 film of Graham Swift’s novel Last Orders, about a group of friends scattering the ashes of their dead chum (played by Caine).
He co-starred with Judi Dench in Stephen Frears’s Mrs Henderson Presents (2005) and played a loner coming late to love in Sparkle (2007), as well as a sympathetic union rep standing up for Ford’s female employees in Made in Dagenham (2010).
In 2012, at 69, he announced his retirement after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. His last screen role came as one of the seven dwarves in Snow White and the Huntsman (2012), in which his face was superimposed on another actor’s body. But he was characteristically subtle as a publican standing up to thugs in Jimmy McGovern’s BBC series The Street (2009), for which he won an International Emmy award.
Hoskins is survived by Linda; their children, Rosa and Jack; and Alex and Sarah, the children of his first marriage.
• Robert William Hoskins, actor, born 26 October 1942; died 29 April 2014
The above “Guardian” obituary can also be accessed online here.
Rupert Friend
Rupert Friend. TCM Overview.
Rupert Friend was born in 1981 in Oxfordshire. He made his film debut with Joan Plowright in “Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont” in 2005. Other movies include “Pride and Prejudice”, “The Moon and the Stars” and “5 Days of War”.
TCM Overview:
Armed with an ability to play both the refined gentlemen and the uncultured street thug with equal believability, British actor Rupert Friend quickly built up an impressive résumé within a few short years. Following his small, but memorable feature film debut opposite a debauched Johnny Depp in the historical drama “The Libertine” (2004), the actor attracted more attention with a supporting turn in a well-received adaptation of “Pride & Prejudice” (2005). The dashing young performer also caught the eye of the film’s leading lady, Keira Knightley, who Friend would date for the next five years. As an actor, he took risks with often unconventional roles in such projects as the heartbreaking Holocaust drama “The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas” (2008) and the sexually-charged, tragic love story “Cheri” (2009), opposite Michelle Pfeiffer. A starring turn as a man who overcomes childhood horrors and a life of crime to become a successful author in the British biopic “The Kid” (2010) preceded his breakout role on American television as CIA analyst Peter Quinn on the acclaimed action-drama “Homeland” (Showtime, 2011- ), alongside series star Claire Danes. From the beginning of his diverse career, Friend consistently demonstrated a willingness to take on challenging roles – a work ethic that soon delivered critical and popular success for the promising young actor.
Rupert Friend was born on Oct. 1, 1981 in Oxfordshire, England and was raised in Stonesfield, Oxfordshire. His father was a business owner and his mother worked for an organization which specialized in immigration, asylum, and human rights. Friend attended The Marlborough School in Woodstock, as well as the Cherwell School and d’Overbroeck’s College in Oxford. Although he grew up in a house without a VCR, the acting bug bit him when he first saw “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” (1989) at a local theater. Soon determined to develop his acting skills, he enrolled at the prestigious Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Arts in London, a university whose other famous alumni included Hugh Bonneville, Matthew Goode, Julian Fellowes and Minnie Driver.
Friend’s professional acting career took off quickly when he landed a supporting role in the film “The Libertine” (2004) opposite Johnny Depp and John Malkovich. In the movie, he played Billy Downs, the handsome lover of John Wilmot, the 2nd Earl of Rochester (Depp). Friend’s performance in the historical drama did not go unrecognized; in 2005, he garnered a Most Promising Newcomer nomination at the British Independent Film Awards and a Best International Newcomer nomination at the Ischia Global Film Festival in 2006. Friend followed up with a minor role in first-time director Joe Wright’s youthful adaptation of Jane Austin’s beloved 19th-century tale of life, love and gentrified marriage, “Pride & Prejudice” (2005). Though the film performed well at box offices internationally and garnered a quartet of Oscar nominations, the more lasting windfall for the actor would be the budding romance between Friend and star Keira Knightley that blossomed on set. The relationship with the high-wattage actress would put Friend on the front pages of U.K. tabloids for the majority of the couple’s five-year-relationship.
With his first starring role, Friend earned high praise for his performance opposite Dame Joan Plowright in the heartwarming drama “Mrs. Palfrey at The Claremont” (2005), which found a young writer and an elderly woman striking up an unexpected, but mutually beneficial relationship, despite their vast age difference. Possessing the self-assuredness of a far more seasoned performer, the young actor was quickly gaining a reputation as one to watch. In increasingly high demand, Friend appeared in slew of films soon after, among them the period romantic drama “The Moon and the Stars” (2007), the urban action-drama “Outlaw” (2007) and the Roman Empire adventure tale “The Last Legion” (2007), the latter of which paired Friend with such acting luminaries as Colin Firth and Sir Ben Kingsley. In a risky move so early in his career, Friend accepted a supporting role as a vicious SS officer in an adaptation of John Boyne’s controversial Holocaust novel “The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas” (2008). In the film – which followed the unexpected friendship between the young son (Asa Butterfield) of an concentration camp commandant (David Thewlis) and a Jewish boy (Jack Scanlon) imprisoned at the death camp – Friend delivered a fearlessly despicable performance as the preening young Lt. Kotler.
For his first stateside production, Friend worked alongside rapidly rising talent Jessica Chastain in the indie coming-of-age drama “Jolene” (2008). Back in more familiar territory, he portrayed Prince Albert, the man who would court and marry the heir to the British Crown (Emily Blunt) in the lavish historical drama “The Young Victoria” (2009). That same year, Friend earned high marks for his starring turn in director Stephen Frear’s sensuous dramedy “Cheri” (2009). Cast as a spoiled young man whose lengthy May-December romance with an aging courtesan (Michelle Pfeiffer) both liberates and destroys him, Friend once again showed impressive acting ability alongside a far more experienced screen veteran. Knightley joined her talented boyfriend on screen once again for a small appearance in “The Continuing and Lamentable Saga of the Suicide Brothers” (2009), a short fantasy film written by Friend and Tom Mison, a chum from his days at Webber Douglas. Unfortunately, the collaboration would mark one of the final mutual appearances for the couple, either on or off-screen, after which Friend and Knightley called it quits the following year, citing the pressure of constant media attention as a primary cause.
Down but not out, Friend threw himself into his work for his next role, the title character of the gritty biographical drama “The Kid” (2010). For his role as British author Kevin Lewis, Friend trained vigorously with professional boxers to convincingly play the young man who escaped a violent, abusive childhood in South London to make a better life for himself and his family. That same year, he also starred in the romantic drama “Lullaby for Pi” (2010) as a washed up jazz singer who develops a strange relationship with a mysterious female artist (Clemence Poesy) who has locked herself up in his hotel bathroom. Also in 2010, Friend made his stage debut as Mitchell in the U.K. premiere of “The Little Dog Laughed,” playing a closeted Hollywood actor whose devious agent arranges a “beard” marriage in an effort to save his client’s burgeoning career.
Returning to screens, Friend next starred as a war journalist attempting to bring the horrors of the 2008 Russo-Georgian conflict to the attention of an apathetic world public in director Renny Harlin’s overlooked action-drama “5 Days of War” (2011). He took on a much smaller role in “Renee” (2012), a biopic chronicling a young girl’s (Kat Dennings) struggle with addiction and self-abuse on the road to recovery and, eventually, serving as the inspiration for a charitable organization. It was, however, on American cable television that Friend made his greatest inroads with U.S. audiences that same year. Beginning with the hit show’s second season, the British actor ditched his accent and joined the cast of the anti-terrorism thriller “Homeland” (Showtime, 2011- ) as a young CIA analyst thrust into the middle of an ongoing illicit investigation into the activities of a decorated war hero (Damian Lewis) suspected by a troubled agency operative (Claire Danes) of being a sleeper terrorist. Friend’s witty and cocky portrayal of Peter Quinn earned him high marks alongside his Emmy-winning co-stars and quickly established him as a fan-favorite on the popular new series.
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
To view “Interview” Magazine article on Rupert Friend, please click here.
Michael Parks
Michael Parks.
Michael Parks was born in California in 1940. He made his acting debut in 1958 in Alfred Hitchcock’s television show. His film career tookoff in 1965 with “Wild Seed” opposite Celia Kaye. He also made “Bus Riley’s Back in Town” with Ann-Margret. In 1966 he went to the U.K. to make “The Idol” opposite Jennifer Jones. In 1969 he had his own series about a biker entitled “Then Came Bronson”. His career has has a comeback in recent years working with newer directors such as Quentin Tarentino.
IMDB entry:
Michael Parks was born on April 24, 1940 in Corona, California, USA as Harry Samuel Parks. He is an actor, known for Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004), Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003) and Django Unchained (2012). He is married to Oriana. He was previously married to Carolyn Kay Carson, Jan Moriarty and Louise M. Johnson.The theme song “Long Lonesome Highway” from Parks’ TV series Then Came Bronson(1969), sung by Parks himself, was penned by James Hendricks, a Greenwich Village folksinger who was married to ‘Mama Cass Elliot’ of The Mamas and the Papas, not byJimi Hendrix.
The song became a Top 40 hit in 1970.Prior to becoming an actor. his jobs included picking fruit, digging ditches, driving trucks and fighting forest fires.Turned down an offer to play minor league baseball for the Pittsburgh Pirates because he was making more money upholstering caskets.
Attempted to qualify for the 1972 Olympics as a miler, running a time of 4:06.Recorded a half-dozen country/blues/jazz albums in the late ’60s and early ’70s.
He played Earl McGraw, the police officer with bad puns, in Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003) and then played Esteban Vinaio, the 80-year-old, smooth Mexican pimp who once was Bill’s mentor in Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004).
This makes him only one of two actors to appear in both Kill Bill films playing different characters. The other person to play separate roles in both films is Chia-Hui Liu.The official “Kill Bill” websites claim that he is “frequently cited by longtime fan Quentin Tarantino as the world’s greatest living actor.”.
Was a close friend of legendary director Jean Renoir.Father of actor James Parks.
He has played the character of Earl McGraw in three separate films involving Quentin Tarantino: From Dusk Till Dawn (1996), Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003) and Grindhouse (2007) (both Death Proof (2007) and Planet Terror (2007)).He was a pall bearer for Lenny Bruce.Was discovered by Frank Silvera while acting in a play entitled “Compulsion” at age 18.
The pilot of the series Then Came Bronson (1969) reflects and drew heavily on the background of Parks’ own life story.Was one of five children of an itinerant laborer.
Like the rest of his family, Parks drifted from job to job in his early teens, briefly marrying at age 16.Plays the lead, an aging, misguided NSA listener in indie thriller In ascolto (2006).Filming a new movie Julian Po (1997) with Christian Slater and Robin Tunney.
Sophie Okonedo
Sophie Okonedo was born in London in 1968. She was nominated for an Oscar for her performance in “Hotel Rwanda”. On television she has starred in “Oliver Twist” and “Mayday”.
TCM overview:
Born in London to a Nigerian father and British mother, Sophie Okonedo never considered being an actress when she grew up, let alone an international star. A voracious reader all her life-a government official visiting the family’s home marveled at the large bookcase stocked with books-Okonedo got her start through a writing workshop she took with renowned novelist and playwright, Hanif Kureishi (My Beautiful Laundrette, My Son the Fanatic). Though she had no desire to be a writer, Okonedo took the course because it was something interesting to do at night. She soon realized, however, that she was no good as a writer. But she was very good at reading other people’s work aloud, which eventually led to her involvement with the Royal Court Theatre. From there she got a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), where she got her true start as an actress.
After a series of theatrical roles, including Shahrazad in “The Arabian Nights” and Anippe in Christopher Marlowe’s “Tamburlaine the Great”, Okonedo broke through with an acclaimed performance as Cressida in “Troilus and Cressida,” staged by famed theatrical director Trevor Nunn for the National Theatre. Though the only Shakespeare role of her career, Okonedo earned high praise for her ability to project a tense ambiguity between love and passion. The success of her Cressida led the actress to British television: she appeared in episode 5 of “Clocking Off” (BBC-1, 2000), a six-part drama series about the secret lives of every day people; in “Never Never” (2000), she earned a Royal Television Society Award nomination for playing a single mom; and she appeared on “Spooks” (BBC-1, 2002- ), a popular series about Britain’s domestic security agency that was presented across the Atlantic as “MI5” (A&E, 2004- ).
From British television, Okonedo made a quick jump to film. Though she had several thankless parts in major features, including two lines as a princess in “Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls” (1995), and as a nameless Jamaican Girl in “The Jackal” (1997), she made a deep impression with her characterization of a prostitute living in a rundown West London hotel in Stephen Frears’ “Dirty Pretty Things” (2003).
She was then cast in her highest profile role to date as Tatiana Rusesabagina, the wife of a hotel manager (Don Cheadle), who houses 1200 Tutsi refugees fleeing the 1994 genocide in “Hotel Rwanda” (2004). Acclaim for both the film and its performances was bestowed by critics, as Okonedo received nominations from the Screen Actors Guild and Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actress. To prepare for the challenging role, Okonedo read Season of Blood: A Rwandan Journey, by Fergal Keane, then went to Brussels to meet the real-life Tatiana. The topic of the genocide was avoided-Okonedo asked about her relationship with Paul and what she liked to eat. The cultural leap of transforming herself from a London woman to a Rwandan refugee turned out to be her biggest challenge on the film, though two weeks of torrential rain and a sudden loss of financing were also on the list.
After “Hotel Rwanda,” Okonedo returned to the Hollywood system and was cast in the long-awaited film version of the popular MTV series, “Aeon Flux” (2005)-the movie proved to be a disappointing failure on all fronts. But Okonedo rebounded with a moving performance in “Tsunami, the Aftermath” (HBO, 2006), an ensemble drama that depicted various stories involving the devastating 2004 tidal wave that destroyed large portions of Thailand and other parts of South Asia. Okonedo played a mother searching frantically with her husband (Chiwetel Ejiofor) for their 6-year-old daughter after the tsunami literally ripped her from their arms. She earned a nomination for a 2006 Golden Globe Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television.