Category: Profiles

Born October 28, 1897 in San Bernadino, California, Edith Claire Posener became Edith Head when she married her first husband, Charles Head in 1923. The future costume designer received a Bachelor of Arts degree in letters and science with honors in French from the University of California, Berkeley (1919), and a Master of Arts degree…

Born May 2, 1960 in Dorset, England, Stephen Daldry is the son of a singer mother and bank manager father.  The family moved to Taunton, Somerset where his father died of cancer when Daldry was 14. Daldry joined a youth theatre group in Taunton where he performed for the local amateur society.  At 18, he…

Born November 22, 1967 in Kinosha, Wisconsin to a construction painter father and hairstylist mother, Mark Ruffalo was raised in Virginia Beach, Virginia, with his family which included two sisters and a brother, moving to San Diego and then Los Angeles after he finished high school. Ruffalo studied acting at the Stella Adler Conservatory and…

Born May 9, 1946 in Los Angeles, California to former Powers model Frances and ventriloquist-comedian-actor Edgar Beregn, Candice Bergen began performing on her father’s radio program at an early age and at 11 appeared with her father as a guest on Groucho Marx’s TV show, You Bet Your Life. Not a serious student, Bergen was…

Born February 11, 1936 in Lansing, Michigan, Burt Reynolds claimed that he was really born in Waycross, Georgia, that Lansing was where his parents lived when his father was drafted into the U.S. Army.  The family  moved around quite a bit after that.  After the end of World War II, they moved to Rivera, Florida…

Born April 6, 1895 in Wapakoneta, Ohio, Dudley Nichols was educated at the University of Michigan.  A star reporter and feature writer for the New York World in 1928, the year he married wife Esther Varez, he moved to Hollywood in 1929. He was under contract to Fox from 1929-1935 and RKO from 1935-1938 and…

Some longtime great actors and actresses go out in a blaze of glory with an Oscar nomination or even a win for their last great performance. Two-time Oscar winner Spencer Tracy gave four unforgettable last hurrah performances beginning with one in a film called The Last Hurrah in 1958, followed by Inherit the Wind in…

Some longtime actors and actresses seem to be nominated for an Oscar every time they take a role in a high caliber film.  Some are nominated just once or twice in their long careers.  Still others fail to be nominated at all, no matter how hard they try. Everyone knows that such legends as Lon…

Born June 9, 1963 in Owensboro, Kentucky, the youngest of four children of a waitress mother and civil engineer father, John Christopher (Johnny) Depp II frequently moved with his family, settling in Miramar, Florida.  His parents divorced when he was 15, his mother later marrying Robert Palmer, who young Depp considered an inspiration. Depp’s mother…

Born February 22, 1944 in Baldwin, N.Y., (Robert) Jonathan Demme was the son of Robert Demme, a public relations manager and his wife, Dorothy.  The family later moved to Florida, where he was educated, graduating from Southwest Miami High School and the University of Florida. Demme had an early job as a film critic for…