Category: Profiles

Holidays have been celebrated in films since their inception. There have been films about virtually all of them. 1942’s Holiday Inn with Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire is in fact a celebration of all of the U.S. holidays. We have had films that celebrate those we honor on their birthdays – George Washington (1942’s George Washington Slept Here with…

Born May 28, 1931 in Johnstown, Pennsylvania to a travelling salesman and his wife, Carroll Baker studied at Actors Studio under Lee Strasberg where her classmates included Marilyn Monroe, Shelley Winters, Rod Steiger, and James Dean. Baker began acting in TV commercials in 1951, which led to small roles in TV dramas.  She made her…

Born September 29, 1904 in London, England, the daughter of a Scottish father and Irish mother, Greer Garson was educated at King’s College, London and the University of Grenoble in France. Intent on becoming a teacher, she instead went to work in an advertising agency and did some acting on the side, eventually turning to…

Born June 14, 1918 in Omaha, Nebraska, Dorothy McGuire was one of three actresses who came to prominence in the original Broadway production of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. Both she and Teresa Wright had been original star Martha Scott’s understudy, with McGuire eventually replacing Scott when she went to Hollywood. Several Broadway roles later, she was…

Born October 28, 1929 in North Lincolnshire, England, the daughter of a journalist and playwright and his wife, Joan Plowright attended the Old Vic Theatre School after grade school. On stage from 1948, Plowright married first husband, actor Roger Gage, in 1953.  She made her film debut in an uncredited role in 1956’s Moby Dick…

Born April 14, 1941 in Assam, India, the daughter of an English tea planter and his Welsh painter wife, Julie Christie was sent to a boarding school in England at the age of 6. By 16, she had moved to France and soon thereafter returned to England and the British stage. By twenty, she had…

Born January 5, 1946 in Los Angeles, California to an amateur photographer mother and a civil engineer and real estate broker father, Diane Hall was the eldest of four children. After graduating from Santa Ana High School in 1963, she attended Santa Ana and Orange Coast colleges studying acting before moving to New York where…

Born July 10, 1977 in London, England to a Nigerian born doctor and his pharmacist wife, Chiwetel Ejiofor is the middle of three children.  His older sister is a doctor, and his younger sister is a CNN correspondent. In 1988, when Ejiofor was 11, during a family trip to Nigeria for a wedding, he and his…

Born July 1, 1934 in Lafayette, Indiana, Sydney Pollack was the son of a former boxer turned pharmacist and his wife, an alcoholic who died when he was 16. Pollack moved to New York after graduating from high school in 1952   From 1952-1954 he studied acting at The Neighborhood Playhouse. He then served two years…

Born Edythe Marrener, the daughter of a transportation worker, in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, N.Y. on June 30, 1917, the future Susan Hayward went to the movies a lot as a child to escape the boredom of her poor surroundings. A stunning beauty even as a child, she became a photographer’s model as a…